


Little Bits of Mari

by breeeliss



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Continuous story, F/M, Marinette Week, Mostly Fluff, Reveal, Subtle Reveal, identity discovery, prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-16 08:19:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7259752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breeeliss/pseuds/breeeliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Marinette Week 2016 on Tumblr. </p><p>Adrien doesn't realize how he hadn't noticed sooner, or why it took him so long to look at Marinette for just a breath longer than he's used to. But when he finally does, he can't help but pluck little moments, little pieces, small instances, and precious bits that all come together to form a new picture of his classmate. A picture that reminds him a little too much of the masked girl he'd fallen in love with.</p><p>Day 7: Alter-Ego</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day 1: Fashion

Adrien couldn’t remember a time where he’d ever seen Marinette in the middle of designing clothing. This must have been the first time, and he couldn’t understand why he couldn’t keep his eyes off of her. 

He was the lead of Nino’s new video project, but for this scene he was sitting in the background, working at his desk while the other two leads — Alya and Mylene — were arguing through their monologue. They shot the scene close to five times — this one being the sixth — because Nino kept trying out different camera angles and asking the girls to move closer, twist their bodies around, try walking around the scene instead of staying stationary, things like that. It gave Adrien the chance to work on his homework as a proxy for his character doing mindless paperwork, for which he was incredibly thankful, but once the current take started, he happened to let his eyes dart up to the back of the classroom to stare at Marinette. 

Adrien sort of remembered Nino asking Marinette if she wanted a part in the video, but she adamantly insisted otherwise — something about not sounding natural when she was made to read off scripts — and suggested that she’d be much more comfortable being in charge of costumes. So Nino had given her some very basic sketches and descriptions and sent her off to work. The very next day, she’d come in with tape measures around her neck and a box full of swatches of fabric that she kept holding up to people’s faces, muttering something about skin tones the entire time.

He recalled the way she blushed, looked at her feet, and stumbled through her words a little when Marinette had asked to measure him, but Adrien noticed the way her confidence built itself back up when she was ordering him to hold his arms higher, to spread his legs a little wider, and started writing measurements on the back of her hand to use for later. 

It wasn’t until today that Marinette rolled in with a sewing machine and three dress forms she borrowed from the drama department and a box full of half made trousers, shirts, pencil skirts, and suspenders. They’d been practicing their scenes for the entire afternoon while Marinette stayed in the back of the class pinning fabric and pushing it through the sewing machine. 

There was something so different about her like this, maybe that was why he couldn’t look away. Adrien was more than familiar with the Marinette who tripped up and down stairs, accidentally hooked her feet into the straps of her bookbag, and couldn’t seem to string together one coherent sentence when he was within five feet of her. He was less familiar but very much aware of the Marinette who gave an incredible speech when she ran for class representative, the Marinette who often stood up to Chloe’s bullying when no one else would, and the Marinette who cared fiercely for her friends and those close to her. 

But this wasn’t even any of those things, not quite anyhow. It was the way her brows furrowed so deeply, the way she occasionally talked to herself, the way she bit her lips without meaning to when she pinned fabric together or snipped off excess. Even her fingers were moving with this oddly graceful and careful dexterity that didn’t fit his clumsy image of Marinette at all. It was by far the most composed he’d ever seen her, and it was beyond fascinating. 

“Dude! You’re staring off into space and it’s screwing up the shot!”

Adrien blinked suddenly and looked up at Nino who was sighing and looking down at his phone, probably reviewing the footage that he’d just interrupted. Alya was snickering at his expense, and Mylene was staring at him worriedly. He rubbed his hand on the back of his neck and winced, trying his best to look remorseful. “Sorry, I was daydreaming. It’s been a long day.”

“You gotta remember to keep looking down at your desk, otherwise it just looks weird, you get me?” Nino explained. He shrugged casually. “It’s cool, man, don’t worry. I think I wanna do some extra shots and splice them together anyway.”

Alya groaned, walked over to Nino, and leaned her chin on his shoulder while she looked down at his phone. “Again? We’ve done this scene a dozen times. Never would’ve pegged you for a perfectionist. Didn’t you say we could get a break? I’m hungry!”

“I’m not a perfectionist, I’m just trying to get the scene to look like how it did in my head.” Alya stuck her tongue out at him, but he just rolled his eyes fondly at her and shrugged her chin off his shoulder. “Fine, fine, I guess we can take a break for a few minutes. But I really want to get this scene done today.”

“And it will get done!” Alya promised. “But your lead detective needs to eat before she can crack your ridiculously convoluted case. Seriously, I need sugar in my brain.”

“I agree, I’m starting to get a little lightheaded myself,” Mylene piped up. “Just for thirty minutes? And then right back to work, we promise.”

Everyone else around them seemed to agree with the idea, so Nino officially announced to the rest of the students helping with the shot that they were going to take a quick break. Everyone immediately started leaving the room to get a quick bite to eat or rummaging through their bags to grab the snacks that Nino told everyone to bring in case the project ran late. Adrien was thinking of running out and getting a bit of bread to help him keep alert and take the time to feed Plagg while he was at it, but he noticed out of the corner of his eye that Marinette was standing and putting one of the white button up shirts on the dress forms and fixing the collar, not acting as if she were planning on breaking for lunch anytime soon. 

He watched Alya tap her on the shoulder and ask her if she wanted anything to eat while she went out, but Marinette shrugged her shoulders and told Alya to just get her something small since she wasn’t all that hungry. Alya wrapped an arm around Nino’s shoulder and pushed them into the hallway so they could run across the street and get some food from the bakery while Marinette simply kept working. 

Deciding that his curiosity was worth indulging in and that Plagg could afford to wait a few more minutes for his cheese, Adrien walked over to the back of the classroom and looked over Marinette’s shoulder as she started unbuttoning the shirt off the dress form. “So how’s the outfit coming along?”

Marinette turned around a little too quickly and made Adrien widen his eyes a little bit in shock when she let out something between a gasp and a squeak, her cheeks immediately warming with color and her words already getting stuck in the back of her throat. “O-Oh, uh, hi! A-Adrien! I didn’t uh, haha….you know, see you.”

“Sorry,” he smiled politely. “I guess I surprised you. You looked liked you were concentrating pretty hard. I was just curious to see how the costumes are coming along.”

“Oh, w-well,” she stuttered, turning around and pushing the dress form with the shirt on it a little closer to Adrien. “I’m actually finishing up your shirt. I was uh….well, I-I was planning on finishing your trousers tonight so that we can try to put on the shirt, the pants and the suspenders together tomorrow. But, um….one thing at a time, I guess.”

Adrien looked at her for a moment, silently asking for permission before he rubbed the fabric of the sleeve between his fingers. It was an inexpensive but comfortable cotton blend that he thought wouldn’t feel too rough or too stiff for their scenes. He looked around briefly at the shirt and saw that all of the seams seemed to have been stitched up properly. He turned to her and asked, “Do you mind if I try it on? Only if it’s done that is.”

Marinette nibbled on her lips — and he was suddenly extremely aware of the difference between her nervous lip biting and her focused lip biting — and balanced on the tips of her toes. “Wait….you want to try it on now?”

“I’m curious,” Adrien grinned. “You’ve been working so hard, I want to see how it feels. If you don’t mind.”

“I, uh….no, no, sure. That’s, uh….that’s fine. Oh, well, lemme just….” She turned around and carefully pulled the shirt off the dress form and held it out for him. “Just be careful not to tear anything, alright?”

Adrien nodded and slipped off his overshirt so that he could pull on the long sleeved shirt. He didn’t know too much about fashion, but he knew enough from being thrust into hundreds of expensive outfits to know a piece of well made clothing when he saw it. He wasn’t sure how long Marinette had been making her own clothes, but the seams were neat, the buttons were straight and aligned well, the collar was crisp and even, and the fabric she picked was breathable and easy to move around in. 

He’d only buttoned the shirt up halfway when he twisted his torso and frowned. “Um….actually, I think the sides feel a little tight.”

Marinette’s brows furrowed slightly, and Adrien almost smiled at the sight. “Tight where?” she asked shortly. 

Adrien pointed right underneath his ribs. “Near the waist. Like it’s stretched too tight across this part here.”

Marinette quickly moved behind him and only hesitated for a few seconds before she started tugging on the fabric. She hummed to herself. “It’s because you’re wearing a shirt on underneath it. I didn’t account for that when I measured you out for the shirt. That must be why it feels a little snug,” she explained, not a single note of nervousness or stuttering present. 

“I can go and change in the bathroom if you want,” Adrien offered. 

“Do you prefer to keep the undershirt on?”

“It’s fine, Marinette. I can just change.”

She shrugged and started up at him with a strange sort of no-nonsense fierceness in her demeanor that he couldn’t explain. “You’re wearing it, it’s your comfort that matters. Just tell me.”

Adrien blinked for a moment before he tilted his head. “Well, I guess I’d prefer to leave it on underneath if it’s all the same.”

“Sure!” she grinned. She gestured for the shirt back as Adrien finished taking it off and sat back down at the seat she was using before, shuffling through a small bag of sewing materials she kept at her side. 

He quietly pulled out the chair next to her and silently watched her work with a smile on his face. She was rolling the shirt inside out and inspecting the seams near the torso. She was looking at a small notebook filled with numbers — probably his old measurements — and pulling out a tape measure to measure the length of the seams. She was clicking her tongue against her cheek and looking back and forth between the shirt and the notebook before Adrien piped up. 

“Do you mind if I ask what you’re doing?” he said. 

Her face was still flushed and she was staring at him as if she were wondering whether or not she should respond, but she shoved the shirt closer to him and spoke without a hitch. “I’m going to let out the torso a little bit to give you more room. I kept a lot of seam allowance just in case this happened, so I think I’m going to give you an extra inch or so of slack. So I’m going to measure out how much I’m letting out, and then….” She reached back into her bag and pulled out a small bit of chalk. “I’ll just mark where I’m going to sew, pull the seams out, and resew it.”

Adrien nodded along, trying to think of more questions if only to keep Marinette talking. “How long will it take do you think?”

“Not long,” Marinette promised, already making the chalk marks she needed. “Maybe twenty or so minutes?”

“Is it going to be hard?”

“Nah,” she said confidently with a smirk on her face. She blindly felt around in her bag for a button hook and started pulling the seams out. “I do this all the time. Easy as pie.”

Their conversation tapered off as Marinette started taking pins out of her bag and pinning together the new seam, but Adrien didn’t mind in the least. He leaned his elbow on the table and leaned his cheek against his fist while he started spacing out and watching her hands work. She used her elbows to hold the fabric taut while she slipped the pins in without any effort, and her fingers were strong and grounded while she held the fabric together to make sure that she recreated the seams right on the marks that she made. He was noticing more little habits — blowing the baby hairs out of her face, nodding her head in a strange rhythm as if she was sewing and pinning to a beat that Adrien couldn’t hear, her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth only just so. 

It was such a charming picture, and he finally realized why she looked so intriguing — it was the first time Marinette made anything she did look effortless. She was probably right that this wasn’t difficult for her because she was making it look like she’d been doing this since she was born — no, like she was born to do this. Adrien couldn’t say he knew what that was like, and could only use the freedom and ease that came with being Chat Noir as his only comparable example. But thinking of Marinette also made him think of another pretty girl clad in red who swung and jumped through the city of Paris like it was easier than breathing. It was hard to explain, but it was like their confidence felt the same, had the same energy and taste to it. He hadn’t meant to compare the two of them, but he couldn’t remove their two faces from his head now that he had started. 

The whirring of the sewing machine had snapped him out of his thoughts and he watched as Marinette started to carefully push the fabric through the machine. He cleared his throat. “Is it alright if I watch you? I realize I didn’t really ask.”

“Not at all,” she smiled, daring to look at him out of the corner of her eye. “Alya likes to watch me sometimes too. It’s….relaxing.”

Adrien smiled in thanks and let his eyes follow the seam of the shirt, the stitching coming out straight as an arrow, and there was something so curiously beautiful about that, about seeing the product of someone’s wonderful, simple labor. He didn’t bother editing himself or keeping himself from talking aloud before he muttered, “I didn’t think sewing could look so graceful.”

Marinette didn’t seem to mind the question, because she grinned in response and nodded. “It’s not always graceful. Sometimes it’s a lot of pinpricks, sewing things together that shouldn’t be together, ripping out seams because you get frustrated. Heck, sometimes when I’m doing something complicated, I shake because I’m nervous and trying to get it just right.” She did something brave and sent him a small smirk that punched a note of strange familiarity through his mind. “But I guess that comes with the territory.”

Adrien chuckled. “Well I don’t see any of that happening now.”

Marinette shrugged, pulling the shirt away and inspecting the seam more closely. “I’m used to it by now. I guess practice smooths out all the harsh edges.”

“Oh please,” Adrien said with an eye roll, leaning in a little closer to her and smiling as he spoke smoothly. “There’s absolutely nothing harsh about you. You look absolutely lovely.”

He only realizes what he said after it’s out of his mouth, and he immediately snaps his jaw shut in shock because oh my God, did he really say that to her? Out loud? His eyes were wide with panic and Marinette had already snapped her head towards him, looking equally as shocked. He messed up. He messed up so bad. He hadn’t meant to say something that had sounded quite so —- what? Friendly? Teasing? Flirty? He wasn’t really sure what he was trying to get at with that statement, but he had only just started getting Marinette to talk to him, and he was sure, with the way that she was looking at him, he’d gone and scared her all over again. 

Except Marinette wasn’t blushing, and she wasn’t stuttering or panicking. If anything, she looked confused or bewildered, like she had water splashed in her face or like a fly zipped right past her nose. She was narrowing her eyes at him, searching for something on his face that she couldn’t quite decipher. It reminded him of that look you’d give a stranger you ran into on the street that you swore you’ve seen somewhere else but couldn’t quite recall where. Adrien almost wished that Marinette started slipping back into her nervousness, because her appraisal was starting to make him self-conscious, and he was feeling himself get warm under the collar of his shirt. 

Deciding the silence was making him feel even more embarrassed, he quickly held out a hand and tried to backtrack. “I mean! Your sewing looks lovely! Not harsh at all. Practiced. You know. Like you said. About your, uh….your sewing.”

Adrien bit down on the inside of his cheek, hoping that it didn’t sound as stupid to Marinette as it did in his head. But instead, Marinette went and surprised him. Instead of matching his nerves, she rolled her eyes perfectly and chuckled from the back of her throat before smirking at him. “Very smooth save,” she laughed with a sharp look of amusement in her eye. “But thanks for the vote of confidence.”

He felt his mouth part open just a touch, and it was only when she noticed that she shook her head a little and turned back down to inspecting the seam on his shirt. He had definitely never seen Marinette look at him or talk to him like that before, like she was teasing him and laughing at his expense. Her eye roll looked so familiar and practiced, and she responded to him with such familiarity and confidence that Adrien was struggling to figure out where it came from. To be fair, he did just make himself look pretty stupid, so maybe he just made it incredibly easy for her to laugh at his expense. But he couldn’t ignore that strange, nagging, thought in the back of his head that had suddenly just drifted to the forefront of his mind, practically screaming to make itself obvious. 

For just a fraction of a second, Marinette reminded him of Ladybug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edit: it's been brought to my attention that I know nothing about sewing XP So any glaring evidence of my ignorance has (hopefully) been fixed. Keep letting me know if things don't make sense. 
> 
> \--
> 
> I'm taking a week long break from my other fics to try my hand at Marinette Week! I decided to make all this a continuous story instead of just a collection of one-shots, so keep an eye out for the plot (because there is one!) Let's just hope I stay on schedule XP
> 
> Read/like/reblog the chapter on Tumblr [here](http://breeeliss.tumblr.com/post/146236197859/marinette-week-2016-little-bits-of-mari)  
> Follow me at breeeliss.tumblr.com


	2. Day 2: Pink

“So she flirted back with you a little. Big deal! I still don’t see what you’re freaking out about.”

Adrien chucked the camembert wrapper at Plagg without looking away from his computer screen. “First of all, we weren’t flirting. It was a friendly conversation,” he made sure to emphasize. “And second of all you weren’t there. I’m telling you. It was uncanny….”

Plagg didn’t seem to agree, and made it a point to make his groaning and sighing extra obvious as he pushed another piece of cheese into his mouth and speak through the food. “So everytime a girl decides to be a little confident with you, you’re gonna make a Ladybug connection?” He rolled his eyes and floated over to sit on top of Adrien’s head, watching the boy as he quickly flipped through the photo archive on the Ladyblog, various snapshots and videos of Ladybug whizzing past the screen. “You’re so lovesick it’s pathetic. Seriously, you need to nip this in the bud before I become sick.”

“No it was more than that.” Adrien suddenly stopped his browsing and pressed his finger against the screen to point at a picture of Ladybug and Chat Noir standing on the edge of a building, laughing after what Adrien remembered was a particularly bad but, in his opinion, downright hilarious joke that he’d told her during one of their patrols about a week ago. He was doubled over at the waist in laughter, and Ladybug was looking down at him with a mix of exasperation and a sharp look of amusement. “Look at this! It was the same look I’m telling you. Damn near identical. I mean, it was only for a second but still. I’d know that look anywhere.”

 

He felt crumbs of cheese getting into his hair, but for once he was too riled up to care at the moment. “Come on,” Plagg complained. “You’re not telling me you’re making predictions based off a single look, are you?”

Adrien frowned and pillowed his head in his arms as he leaned on his desk and continued to analyze the photo in front of him. He supposed Plagg did have a point. This was a reach, and a serious one at that. Despite that one moment from yesterday, he couldn’t possibly assume that there was a connection between Marinette and Ladybug. For every reason that Adrien could come up with that might tie the two of them together, ten reasons came into his head that could explain why that was a preposterous comparison to make. Besides, Adrien spent way longer than he was willing to admit making lists, albeit short ones, of all the things he knew about Ladybug and trying to attach it to the girls in his civilian life that he knew. Not only did that yield no results, but it started to become useless after a while. 

No, it wasn’t necessarily that he was making Ladybug theories, although he’d be lying to himself if he didn’t at least entertain the thought for a bit. It was more that Marinette had suddenly caught his attention in a way that he hadn’t expected — broke through all that clumsiness and nervousness and awkwardness and showed a mature, enticing, and witty composure that he’d only ever heard of from other people or witnessed. This time, he got to see it first hand, directed at him, and it was absolutely bewitching — bewitching in the same way that Ladybug’s demeanor was. 

He wanted to see more of it. 

Adrien sat up straight in his chair and rubbed his hands down his face. “How am I only just seeing this? I can’t possibly be this oblivious, can I?”

“Oh my poor little Adrien,” Plagg said pitifully, patting the top of his blonde curls in mock pity. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to hear the answers to. It’ll be easier for the both of us.”

Adrien glared up at him and brushed all the cheese crumbs out of his hair. “You’re awful, you know that?”

“Don’t ever say I’m guilty of sugar coating things for you. You should thank me!”

Adrien spent the entire car ride to school trying to think back to all the times Marinette had genuinely surprised him, done things that were a little braver, a little more full of substance than they usually were. Tried to remember all the times she’d cleared through conversations with him without trouble and even managed to speak with him like they were on the same level and not like he was some intimidating, terrifying person in her class she couldn’t feel comfortable around. They were few and far between, and it only made Adrien more antsy as a result. This was going to bother him all week. 

He met up with Nino in front of the school, and they walked to their first class together early, their teacher not expected to show for another few minutes. But as they got closer, they heard snathches of what sounded like a particularly lively argument that seemed to have hushed their entire class to a tense silence. 

Adrien walked into the classroom, and the first thing he saw was Chloe with her hands on her hips standing in front of Marinette who had her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Chloe looked like she was trying to burn a hole through Marinette’s forehead, and Marinette looked incredibly annoyed but entirely unaffected by Chloe’s attempts at intimidation. He and Nino both stopped in the doorway and straightened up the moment they started hearing Chloe shout at Marinette again. 

“No one asked for your opinion, Marinette,” Chloe sneered. “First of all, this is absolutely none of your business, and second of all you can’t possibly expect me to believe that you’re an authority on this.”

Marinette wasn’t fazed in the least. “No one ever asks for your opinion either, yet you feel the need force it on everyone who doesn’t want it. You clearly want to make this other people’s business so don’t complain when I call you out on your garbage.” She leaned in closer to Chloe and smirked almost cruelly. “And it’s not like you’re an authority on the subject either.”

“Please, I’m the only one in the class that has anything resembling a fashion sense and if I say that pink makes people look juvenile and overused, then it’s probably time for some people in this class to make some serious fashion adjustments..”

Adrien sighed, wondering again for the umpteenth time why Chloe felt the need to start so many waves in class. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rose sitting in her seat in the classroom with her shoulders hunched up to her ears and her head hanging miserably, Juleka trying her best to cheer her up and get her to lift her head. She was in another one of her signature pink outfits, and Adrien was suddenly afraid to know what had started this argument. 

“No one asked for your opinion!” Marinette snapped back. “Besides, pink is a perfectly lovely color. Rose looks gorgeous today.”

“Yeah, for a seven year old.”

“Oh and I suppose you’re the model of maturity?”

“Elegant patterns and solid colors, Ms. Dupain-Cheng. Of course, it’s not like you’d know anything about that.”

Alya was watching the entire scene with an amused smirk on her face, and Adrien leaned down to whisper to her as he discreetly slid into his seat. “What did we miss?”

“Chloe was picking on Rose and said that pink made her and everyone else look like children. Marinette pitched a fit about it though. They’ve been arguing ever since.”

Nino rolled his eyes. “Pettiness, meet Chloe. Why am I not surprised?”

“Anyway, you know Marinette when it comes to Chloe,” Alya reminded them. “You can’t convince that girl away from putting her in her place. Not that I’m complaining. This has been the highlight of the morning.”

Adrien turned back to Marinette, and the first thing that popped into his head was that she looked positively fierce, ready to pounce on Chloe’s head if necessary, and Adrien found that particularly fascinating. It wasn’t as if this was the first time Marinette had stood up to Chloe on behalf of someone in the class, but now Adrien was sitting there and purposefully paying attention to every little wrinkle of her nose and every annoyed tap of her finger against the crook of her elbow. Her patience was dissipating and her frustration was practically rolling off of her in waves. 

She was in the middle of a rant by the time their teacher came into the classroom and prevented them from taking the argument any further. To his surprise, Marinette didn’t stop by his desk to say hello to him in the mornings like she usually did. Instead, she stomped up the stairs to her seat, fell into her seat a little harder than was necessary, and fumed through the entirety of the lesson. Adrien tried to look back at her a couple of times during class, but her head was buried in her books and in her notes, and he couldn’t think of anything proper to ask her or tell her that was worth breaking her out of such an intensely bad mood. He looked back towards Alya, but she shook her head and told him to just leave it alone. 

The rest of the morning passed without a hitch and lunch with Nino was the same as it always was. He briefly noted that Marinette went straight home to her bakery right after the lunch pause started, but he didn’t think anything of it. He sort of remembered that Marinette always went home for lunch. It made sense since she lived so close by. 

But it wasn’t until Adrien was sitting in their next class and looking through his old notes that the rest of the day had suddenly gotten ten times better. 

Marinette barged into the classroom with a flourish and stood proudly in the doorway in a pink pleated dress, a pink flower in her bun, pink sandals, pink jeweled accessories, and a pink purse hanging off of her hip. Alya immediately snorted with laughter at the sight of her friend’s new outfit and Nino was already sniggering to himself and staring at Chloe who looked downright livid. But Marinette was on a mission and she walked over to Chloe’s desk, plopped a folder of pictures and papers in front of her, and started to pull them out one by one and hold them up to the girl’s face. 

“Gabriel Spring Line, 2015. One of his first catwalks had dresses and full leg pants in his collection, and three of those twelve outfits were all shades of pink, as you can see here, here, and here.” Marinette plucked what looked to be example photos from Adrien’s father’s line — all beautiful shades of pink — and dropped them unceremoniously in Chloe’s lap. 

“Mystique Spring Line, 2012. Evening gowns. Half of them were pink.” Four more photos were pushed into Chloe’s lap. “Éclat’s jewelery line, late March of 2013. Pastel pendants. Here are all the pink ones that were pushed out. Clinique’s line of lipsticks for this season are literally half pinks and corals. And don’t even get me started on all of the major outlets who are pushing out pinks and corals for all of their clothing, shoes, and accessories for women. See exhibits A through K.”

Marinette pushed the rest of the folder towards Chloe, stepped back a little, and did a twirl so that the skirt of her pink dress lifted and spun for everyone to see. “Oh, and please feel free to make a comment on my outfit. Heck, I dare you.”

Adrien almost wanted to start cackling because the entire display was so damn near perfect. Chloe looked like she was about to hurt someone, and Marinette looked so smug and spiteful is was absolutely wonderful. She was smirking down at Chloe, as if she were daring the other girl to say something in response, her chin was lifted high, her arms were crossed, and her hip was popped out to the side as she waited for Chloe to retaliate. And suddenly, there it was. There were so many times when Ladybug would stare down an akuma with the swagger and same attitude that Marinette was showing right now, and Adrien wished he could take a picture of the comparison and shove it in Plagg’s face later to prove that he wasn’t going crazy, and he wasn’t just seeing things. Ladybug was always confident and self-satisfied, and she had every right to be because Ladybug had the strength, the intelligence, and the grace to justify it. 

But here was Marinette, showing that same confidence that Adrien had only ever seen a handful of times, fully convinced that she had the facts and the evidence to take Chloe’s argument and completely invalidate it. Judging by Chloe’s face, it was working, and Rose was beaming from the back of the room, finally sitting up straighter and smiling over at Marinette with eyes that were screaming with thanks. 

Chloe wasn’t saying anything, and honestly what was there to say? That Marinette’s outfit looked ridiculous? That her facts were wrong? She could’ve tried if she wanted to, but everyone in the room couldn’t possibly deny that Marinette’s dress was stunning and that she clearly spent the two hour pause doing a considerable amount of research — printing examples to boot — that was nothing if not thorough. Marinette realized this too because she smiled sweetly and turned back to head to her seat. “Didn’t think so!”

The lesson had already started by the time Marinette made it back to her seat and gave Alya a discreet high five under the table. The teacher was writing on the board and explaining something about their next lesson, but Adrien still took the risk and turned around in his seat to face her. “Hey Marinette?”

Adrien was only a little disappointed to see that her composure deflated just a tad when his attention was entirely focused on her — her shoulders scrunched up to her ears just a little, and her hands moved to tangle themselves up in her lap — but she cleared her throat, breathed in through her nose, and managed to talk clearly when she answered him. “Yeah, Adrien?”

“That was really cool,” he told her. “Sticking up for Rose like that. I think she really appreciated it.”

Marinette let herself smile shyly and looked down at her lap. “Oh, it was….it was nothing, really. But….well, um, if I’m being completely honest, it wasn’t just for Rose.”

Adrien frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I guess I was also kind of offended,” Marinette explained. “S-So I wanted to make sure that Chloe knew that she was wrong. Pink is actually my favorite color.”

Adrien smiled at the tidbit, filed it away in his head, and swore he wouldn’t forget for reasons he couldn’t explain and would hopefully try and sort out later. “Is that so?”

She smile widened and she nodded vigorously. “Yeah. We pink lovers have to stick together, you know? There was no way I could sit by and not say anything.”

Adrien laughed, all too familiar with that kind of drive and determination that a certain someone he knew had in droves. “I completely agree.”

The next morning, in a show of impulsiveness, he looked through the deepest part of his closet, pulled out a coral pink button down that he’d gotten for his last birthday but never wore, and put it on in place of his regular everyday clothes. 

When he got to school and had to deal with Chloe clinging to his arm and asking him what on Earth he was thinking when he decided to get dressed this morning, he merely shrugged his shoulders and proudly adjusted his collar. “I’ve suddenly grown fond of pink.”

Marinette passed him on the way to her seat, wearing pink jeans and a pink blouse, and smiled at him encouragingly. 

He grinned back at her and sighed in satisfaction. During their patrol tonight, Adrien would have to remember to ask Ladybug what her favorite color was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies if it seems rushed. I think I did this in a couple of hours because I got home super late. I'll spruce it up tomorrow :)
> 
> Read/like/reblog the chapter on Tumblr [here](http://breeeliss.tumblr.com/post/146293108414/marinette-week-2016-little-bits-of-mari)  
> Follow me at breeeliss.tumblr.com


	3. Day 3: Love

Adrien had to admit that his disappointment at having to miss school today was worsened by more than just not being able to see his friends and being pushed behind in his schoolwork. For the rest of last week and two days into this week, it had been a source of incredible amusement for him to see what sort of brilliantly pink outfit Marinette would come into class with next. He sort of expected Marinette to keep it going for only a couple of days, but Adrien had a sneaking suspicion that Marinette was doing it out of pure joy at this point. No one in their class was a stranger to the sheer range of clothing that Marinette owned, but Adrien really needed to tip his hat to her for this past week. No repeat outfits, and a few ensembles that he was half tempted to show to his father because they looked like they belonged in a shop window. 

But the photoshoot he had scheduled for today was long and had a lot of different parts and even more outfit changes, and there was no way he was going to plow through it quick enough to get to school. He thought of asking Nino to snap a picture of Marinette for him so that he could see today’s outfit, but typing out the question on his phone made it seem far stranger than it did in his head. He supposed he’d just have to hope that Marinette hadn’t planned her grand finale yet. 

Adrien was absentmindedly watching the boats skimming along the water of the Seine while his makeup artist touched up the contour on his cheeks and his stylist adjusted his cravat and pulled at the rolled up sleeves of his jacket. The only good thing about all of this fuss was that they were shooting right along the river which at least gave Adrien a decent view to keep his mind occupied. Nino never understood why Adrien preferred sitting in class and learning to all of this, but he supposed this kind of monotony was hard to explain to someone who wasn’t used to it. He tried not to sigh so as not to disrupt his helpers. 

He was leaning against the stone partitions, schooling his face into that neutral, brooding model stare that he had to start perfecting ever since his father started making him do more mature photoshoots and more mature clothing lines. He tried to space out as much as he could to make the shoot go by quicker. He could do it. Just a few more hours. 

It wasn’t until he was being pulled out of another outfit that he heard laughing and a flash of pink out of the corner of his eye. He looked over his shoulder and to his delight saw Alya and Marinette walking along the Seine, probably having just gotten out of classes. They were bumping shoulders and walking right towards the shoot and he waited for Alya to look up at him before he smiled and waved at them. 

Alya grinned, waved back, and pushed her elbow into Marinette’s side to get her to look in the same direction. Marinette’s head shot up and she immediately stopped in her tracks once their eyes met. Her mouth fell open and she froze up completely for a solid five seconds before she turned around and tried to book it in the opposite direction. But Adrien laughed when Alya caught her and started to push her in Adrien’s direction. Adrien quickly told the head photographer that the girls were friends and not fans, and he waved them over to the set once he got the okay.

“Well, look at who we happened to run into,” Alya said in mock surprise. “Adrien doing a photoshoot. Who would have thought, right Marinette? Such a coincidence!”

He heard Marinette hiss at Alya quietly. “I thought you said we were going to his hou— ”

“No!” Alya said hurriedly. “This was completely an accident, totally and definitely just a chance encounter.” Marinette was staring at her friend furiously but Alya was dutifully ignoring it. “Looking good, my fancy modeling friend.”

Adrien sniggered. “Thanks. It’s good to see you two.” He turned to Marinette and couldn’t help but smile. “Nice outfit today, Marinette.”

She was decked out in a pink romper, pink pumps, and a white narrow brimmed hat with pink ribbons wrapping around it. She held onto the rim of her hat, still staring at him in bewilderment as if she hadn’t completely heard him. But Alya shoved the middle of her back and Marinette blinked rapidly and smiled shakily. “Haha….yeah, u-uh. Thanks.”

Alya made a show of pulling out her phone, looking at the time, and shaking her head pitifully. “Well, would you look at that. It looks like I’ve got somewhere to be. Guess I’m going to have to leave this to you Marinette.”

Marinette turned to Alya looking positively panicked. “Wait, you’re leaving?!”

She winked at Marinette and started walking backwards down the other side of the street. “Hey, I’m as surprised as you are. All these unplanned complications. But you should be fine with Adrien, right?” She laughed and turned away before shouting over her shoulder, “Text me later!”

Marinette looked caught between fleeing and having a conniption right on the spot, and Adrien found himself taking pity on her. He only remembered telling Nino where he was shooting this afternoon. Nino almost definitely told Alya, but he supposed that Marinette didn’t get the message and was surprised to see him. He brought a fist up to his mouth and cleared his throat before gesturing to her. “So, it’s nice to see you,” he said casually. “You caught me during our break so that’s lucky.”

She nodded vigorously and gave a smile that seemed a little forced. “Oh, haha, yeah! Super lucky for me. I mean, uh — ! N-Not that I mean this is like amazing for me! Because it totally isn’t…. not to say that you’re not amazing, because you are! I mean, not like super amazing, but just, you know, kind of — “ Marinette sighed in horror, turned away from him, and hit herself lightly on the cheek. “Oh my god….”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Adrien chuckled, suddenly feeling a little self-conscious himself. He couldn’t possibly be making her feel this nervous, could he? “Um….where were you headed before you came here? Do you have time to chat for a bit? I could use a break.”

Marinette bit on her bottom lip tightly and drummed her fingers on the strap of her bag before she quickly reached in, pulled out a small folder of papers, and held it out to Adrien. “I was, uh….well, we were on our way to your house to….drop off some homework in your mailbox. And some notes. You know because, you uh….missed classes today?”

“Oh, you really didn’t have to,” Adrien said, taking the papers from her and flipping through them. All of their assignments sheets and problem sets were stapled together along with some photocopies of what must’ve been Marinette’s notes from class today. He suddenly felt so touched that she’d thought of him, and gestured towards the back of the set. “Here, you want to sit with me and take a snack break? I haven’t eaten since noon and I’m starving. I’d love the company.”

Marinette hesitated for a moment like she wanted to say no, and by the way she was twisting her foot around and gripping her backpack like it was about to run away from her, he almost expected her to come up with an excuse. She looked incredibly nervous, maybe a little scared, but she still managed to nod her head and force out a small “Sure.”

Adrien tried not to look too excited or too animated for fear of making her more uncomfortable. He didn’t want to lose such a good opportunity to have a one on one conversation with Marinette for once. The last time they’d spent time alone together was when they’d been training together for the Mecha Strike tournament, and that had been weeks ago. He admittedly didn’t have much experience having friends, but he knew that friends usually spent more time talking and hanging out with each other. The last few days especially had been alerting Adrien to how little he really knew about Marinette and he hoped to change that starting as soon as he could. 

The two of them pulled out plates of croissants, fruits, pastries, and cheeses and Adrien led them to a nice seat overlooking the river where they could eat in peace without his staff fussing over him. He was discreetly sneaking pieces of cheese into his pocket for Plagg when Marinette surprised him and cleared her throat to start a conversation. 

“So, uh” she said, looking like she was trying her hardest to avoid eye contact with him. “Long day, huh?”

“Tell me about it,” Adrien said in annoyance. “I think this is the first time I’ve sat down in three hours. We’ve been shooting all morning and afternoon.”

Marinette winced. “Why so long?”

“It’s a big line that my father wants to push out, and it’s going to turn into a huge spread,” Adrien explained. “Something like eight pages. A lot of money, so it has to look good.”

“I’m sorry,” Marinette said pitifully. “But….at least you’re having fun, right?”

Adrien shrugged unconvincingly. “I guess….”

Marinette raised a brow. “That’s a lot of enthusiasm.”

He laughed at the sarcasm and brushed the hair out of his eyes as the wind picked up. “Sorry. I don’t mean to sound dull, but, between you and me, I’d much rather be spending my afternoon doing something else.”

Adrien felt a bit of bitterness entering his voice, and he hadn’t meant to make it obvious. But Marinette must’ve picked up on it because she asked, “Do you….not like modeling?”

He spoke through a small mouthful of bread. “I mean….I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it either. It’s just kinda something I do, you know? Not something I really like.”

Marinette hummed in thought. “Well….what do you love then? What do you really like?”

Adrien shrugged. “School, I guess. I’m good at it, and it’s fun. Fencing’s also fun. I like my basketball practice a little bit too, although I could do without it. Um….”

Marinette twisted her mouth. “You don’t sound so sure….”

If he was being completely honest, he didn’t feel sure. He didn’t often think about his extracurriculars, but they were very much things that he expected because they were just a part of his daily schedules that he accepted without complaint, not because he was necessarily thrumming with anticipation to have them done. He was anxious to see his friends in school and joke with Nino and transform into Chat Noir for patrols and for akuma fights. Everything else, well….

He shook his head. “I guess I’m not.”

“Well,” Marinette slowly. “What excites you? What’s the first thing you think about in the mornings? What distracts you during classes? What’s always on your mind, something you always want to be doing?”

He wanted to say ‘being a superhero,’ but he couldn’t very well admit that to Marinette. So Adrien answered honestly. “....I’m not sure.”

The response sounded sad to him when he heard himself say it, so he shook his head and turned the question back around to Marinette. “What do you love? What excites you, distracts you, gets you going, all that good stuff?”

Her answer was immediate. “Designing,” she said with a smile. “I can’t imagine myself doing anything else in the future. It’s all I want to do. I’m good at it. I have fun doing it.” She shrugged. “I love it.”

“Do you want to design when you get older?”

Marinette nodded. “I mean, this is all just planning at the moment. But I want to maybe go to university and study design. Intern at a few fashion labels. Maybe even have my own line in the far future.” She was staring down at her food and ripping it up into pieces on her plate. “It’s pretty lofty, but when you’re doing what you love, going after what’s impossible seems worth it.”

This was all new information for Adrien, and he couldn’t stop himself from asking more questions. “When did you start?”

Marinette nibbled on her lip and smiled through it. “Oh, uh….really young, I imagine. I don’t remember it well, but….my grandmother was always sending coloring books to me on my birthdays. But instead of coloring in the lines, I’d kind of just draw over the outlines and make my own clothes. When I filled up all the coloring books, my parents got me sketchbooks. And once I got bored with that, I started watching my mom at the sewing machine when she’d fix all the clothes I’d ruined. And just a bunch of other little things down the line….”

“So you were young when you knew,” Adrien said a little sadly. 

Marinette picked up on his tone and frowned. “Look, I’m lucky. I knew really early on what I loved and what I wanted to do for as long as I can. Everyone is different. Some people don’t discover their passions until a lot later on. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I don’t know, I just….” Adrien sighed. “I feel like I do all these things, and I’m okay at everything I do. But there’s nothing that I do that I want to do better, if that makes sense. Like….” He struggled to find the words. “Modeling and fencing and learning languages, and all these other things my father wants me to do….I kinda just do them. They don’t feel pivotal. It’s sort of like my life would go on just fine if I didn’t have them.” He shrugged his shoulders and chewed on his food morosely. “Besides, you’re amazing at what you do. You’re a brilliant designer. I’m not that good at anything.”

He hadn’t meant to sound so bitter and make the conversation about himself, but Adrien supposed he’d been holding that in for a while. This wasn’t exactly what he meant when he wanted to get some time alone to talk to Marinette — he sort of expected to stick to safer topics. But they were here already, and there was no taking back what was said. 

Marinette didn’t respond right away and was instead looking at him curiously, similar to the way she was looking at him on that day when he was watching her design costumes last week — like she was analyzing him, searching for something she couldn’t quite see. She huffed out a short breath and put her plate aside. “Why are you selling yourself so short?”

Adrien blinked at her and scratched the back of his head. “...I don’t mean to.”

“Want to hear a story?” Marinette asked. 

“Sure, I guess.”

She sat up a little straighter and actually stared him in the face this time around. “A couple of years ago, there was this small designing contest for young, aspiring designers that I found out about online. I worked on this jacket for it for days. But I was being too ambitious because I wanted to impress everyone, and it wound up coming out awful. Buttons were crooked, seams were coming out, fabric wasn’t sticking right, things like that. I didn’t even place, and I thought I was such a terrible designer. My dreams were stupid, and I was better off quitting. And I almost did. But here I am.”

Marinette paused and chewed on her words a bit more. “I guess what I’m trying to say is….it’s not about what you’re really good at. If you love something hard enough, you’ll keep at it even if you’re awful at it. Because you want to keep doing it, want to keep getting better at it. You want to do it because it makes you feel good and makes you feel like you’re putting something good into the world. That’s what love for something is.”

She smiled encouragingly. “You don’t have to have passions yet. But don’t think you’re doomed to not have any because you’re not good at anything, even though I’m sure that’s not true. Forget about what you have to do and start thinking about the things you want to do. Then work on it. Talent usually follows, at least in my experience.”

Adrien couldn’t see the look on his face. He could only tell that he was letting a huge smile stretch across it and was feeling a warm sort of tenderness in his chest at everything she’d told him. But Marinette suddenly seemed to let his expression sink in for her, because her face flamed up into such a startling shade of pink that it spread all the way up to her ears. Her fingers were tangling together and she let out a quiet little awed breath, unable to break eye contact with him. She looked embarrassed, but Adrien couldn’t help but admit that she did look endearing like this. 

“I-I, um,” she stuttered, looking down into her lap. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to go on a rant like that.”

Adrien shook his head. “No, don’t apologize. You’re really good at giving advice. I appreciate it.”

Marinette grinned self-consciously and hid her face behind the rim of her hat. “Y-You’re welcome.”

She was pulling into herself again, and Adrien scrambled around quickly to try and stop it. “Any last tips for an aspiring passion seeker?”

Marinette pouted her lips a little in thought and stared out at a point just over his head. “Hm….I would say….love yourself more.”

Adrien furrowed his brows. “What does that mean?”

“I mean, learn to give yourself some credit,” Marinette told him. “I’m sure there are plenty of things you’re good at, even if you don’t think so. And I’m sure there are plenty of things that you love that you don’t think are all that important. Own that. You’re probably more exceptional than you realize. You just have to do things for yourself.”

It was such a thoughtful response, and not one that he expected to come out of Marinette. She seemed so wise to him in that moment and he was suddenly so grateful and privileged to have gotten such kind words from her. It made Adrien want to find some way to thank her, some way to express all of the warm feelings of validation she was springing forth in his whole body, but he was coming up short on ways that would fully capture his feelings. A thank you didn’t feel like enough, but he still nodded his head in thanks and tried to let all the fondness reach his eyes so that she’d see it. “Thank you.”

Marinette smiled at him softly. “Of course.”

Adrien thought back to her words and chuckled at himself. “Love myself, huh? I don’t quite know how to do that.”

“It takes practice,” Marinette insisted. “You have to appreciate your good qualities. Learn to give yourself compliments or something to start.”

Adrien furrowed his brows. “Compliments?”

“Worth a try,” Marinette shrugged. 

It was interesting advice, but a devious, goofy part of his brain slammed itself to the forefront and left Adrien with a silly grin on his face. “What, so like, uh….hey Adrien, if you were words on a page, you’d be fine print?”

Marinette stared at him in confusion for a second as if she didn’t understand what he said, but once the joke sunk in, her eyes narrowed and her entire face fell flat. “You did not just say that….”

Adrien laughed. “You said compliment myself!”

“Yeah,” Marinette said with an eye roll. “Not come up with cheesy pick up lines for yourself. That’s the exact opposite of what I meant.”

Adrien put a hand to his forehead and frowned. “Gosh, did I just come out of the oven? Because I am hot!”

Marinette actually bursted into laughter and scooted away from him. “No, no, I’m not doing this.”

“It’s a good thing I have my library card,” Adrien mused, stroking his chin comically. “Because I am checking me out.”

Her face was buried in her hands. “God, that was awful, please stop.”

He grabbed his jaw in mock pain. “Gosh, I’m so sweet, I think I’m giving myself a toothache.”

Marinette was chortling and looking at him in shock, searching his face again and shaking her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe this….”

“What?”

“....you’re such a dork.”

Adrien gasped. “What!? How dare you. I’ll have you know that if I was a chicken….I’d be imPECKable.”

Marinette eye actually twitched at that joke. “No, you are not mixing puns into your pick up lines.”

“That’s a very hard thing to do,” Adrien said sagely. “Seriously.”

“You’re going to give me a rash,” she said, teasing him so comfortably as if she’d been doing it since the day they met. “Those were all terrible.”

“You said compliment myself, and I’m doing that the best way I know how,” Adrien explained. “You gave me some very good advice and I intend to follow it.”

Marinette crossed her arms and looked at him with a charming smirk and a glint in her eye. “You’re quite the smart aleck, aren’t you?” 

“Maybe being a smart aleck is one of my passions,” Adrien teased. 

He had to admit, Marinette had put him in an incredibly good mood and it made the sillier part of his personality come out just so that he could do something with all the happiness. It was usually something he reserved when he was comfortably transformed as Chat Noir and didn’t need to worry about what other people would say to see him acting like anything else other than the prim, proper son of Gabriel Agreste that he was meant to be emulating. But Marinette was merely laughing at his expense, teasing him, being sarcastic with him, and overall enjoying his company. He leaned over and dared to bump his shoulder with hers, and was a little too glad when she leaned back into him and bumped his shoulder back. 

The two of them were still sitting on the edge of the Seine, swinging their legs back and forth and staring out over the river, and Adrien found that he could easily replace this scene with those nights where he and Ladybug would sit on the edge of the tallest building they could find, sitting and talking and laughing just like this. He’d think back to those moments and realize that they made him feel the most comfortable he’d ever been. He chalked it up to Ladybug’s company, and only idolized her further for making him feel so at ease in his own skin. But he found that sitting here with Marinette and laughing over his ridiculous jokes made him feel just as comfortable, and just as calm. If he could dare say he loved anything fiercely, it was this kind of pure, easy, comfort had with friends. He’d been waiting months to finally be able to say that about Marinette. 

“I’ll make it my homework assignment,” Adrien smiled, dreading the minute he’d have to leave her and head back to work on his photoshoot. “One compliment for myself everyday. I’ll check in with you in the morning.”

“I’ll be bracing myself,” Marinette joked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To make up for the two hour stint I pulled yesterday, I worked extra hard on this one. Hope you enjoyed it :)
> 
> Read/like/reblog the chapter on Tumblr [here](http://breeeliss.tumblr.com/post/146336506304/marinette-week-2016-little-bits-of-mari)  
> Follow me at breeeliss.tumblr.com


	4. Day 4: Clumsy

“It’s that time again Marinette!”

Adrien left Nino’s side and marched straight to Marinette’s desk once they arrived at their classroom in the morning. Marinette looked up from her sketchbook for a moment before she rolled her eyes and leaned back into her chair with a smile, preparing herself for the worst. “Alright. What do you have for me today?”

He kneeled on his seat and turned around so that he could lean his elbows on Marinette’s desk. “This is a good one, I think you’re going to like it.”

“The last ten have been nothing short of debilitating, what makes you think this one is going to be any better?”

He pouted. “That’s because you have no appreciation for puns and jokes.”

She smirked back. “I appreciate jokes. Just not corny ones.”

Adrien groaned and held his hand up to his heart. “That one hurt. Right here.”

Marinette waved in front of herself. “If you think you can prove me wrong, go right ahead.” 

Adrien absently noted that Alya and Nino were doing that thing that they’ve been doing for the past week and a half where they huddle together and watch Adrien and Marinette’s morning ritual like it was this bizarre anomaly that had no business existing and just didn’t make any sort of logical sense. But he learned to ignore it in favor of putting all his effort into getting Marinette to bump her forehead on her desk every morning in exasperation because of the dozens — and he literally meant dozens — of puns and jokes he had on reserve, ready to fire at a moment’s notice. 

“If I were a vegetable,” Adrien began with a flourish. “Do you know what kind of vegetable I’d be?”

Marinette raised both of her eyebrows. “I’m afraid to ask, but what kind of vegetable would you be?”

He grinned widely. “A cute-cumber.”

Her entire face fell. “Get away from me.”

“That was a good one!” he laughed. 

“No, that was probably the cheesiest one to date. Including the fruit one from yesterday. I’m offended.”

“You know, I’m really sorry you feel that way. Because I had a bonus one for you today since I’m in such a good mood.”

Marinette’s eyes widened and she immediately covered her ears. “Nonono, I’m not listening!”

He leaned in closer to her and pointed to his eye. “Boy, my left eye has really been hurting,” Adrien complained. “I think it’s because I’ve been looking right all day.”

“I said I didn’t want to hear it!”

“Come on, you have to admit, that was a clever one. Fresh off the press this morning.”

“I’m not admitting to anything other than that was beyond cheesy.”

Three weeks ago, they wouldn’t have been able to speak like this. Adrien wouldn’t have felt comfortable joking around so candidly with Marinette, and Marinette probably would have been keeping her typical track record of only being able to give one word responses without completely losing her composure. But it was like suddenly deciding to let loose a little around her broke down some walls that she’d built her nervousness around and finally gave her the opportunity to tease and joke around with him back, even if most of the times it was at his own expense. Though, he’d tell puns and jokes and corny one-liners for the rest of his life if it meant that Marinette could finally talk to him like a normal person. 

It felt so so nice, nicer than he’d ever expected. He’d always wanted to gain Marinette’s friendship ever since he cleared the air with her on his first day of school. He always wanted her to be comfortable around him, to talk to him like Nino and Alya talked to him. It was both surreal and exciting to finally be able to be so candid around her. 

Nino was enjoying the novelty a little too much because the minute they left for their next class, he hooked his arm into Adrien’s elbow and whispered, “So someone’s getting a little chummy with the lovely girl sitting behind him, huh?”

Adrien rolled his eyes. “Stop it. It’s not like that.”

“I dunno,” Nino said in a singsong voice. “Things are looking a little like that.”

“We’re just talking,” Adrien said slowly. “We do it all the time and you don’t freak out about it.”

“I’m not Marinette.”

Adrien patted his back. “I’m glad you finally realized that. I was starting to get worried.”

“You know what I mean, dude,” Nino laughed. “Marinette couldn’t look at you without imploding and now you guys are getting along like you’ve been friends since day one. You know that this is different.”

Adrien merely shrugged. “I mean, yeah, but I don’t see why I have to make a big deal about it.”

“Isn’t it a big deal though? This is like, serious progress. Even Alya thinks so and she knows Marinette like the back of her hand.”

Adrien rubbed the back of his neck. “I dunno, man. I kinda don’t want to draw attention to it and make it seem like it’s this weird, miraculous thing. I just want it to….to just be what it is, you know? Two friends talking. That’s all it is at the end of the day.”

Nino wrinkled his nose. “I guess that’s a good point. Still, aren’t you curious though?”

Of course, Adrien wanted to say. He was curious about what made him so unapproachable before, and he was infinitely curious about what changed to make him approachable now. Maybe it was the conversation they had by the river the other day. Or maybe it was because Adrien started talking to her a little bit more before the river. Maybe he was finally paying attention to her a little bit more and she finally noticed. It could’ve been a thousand different things, and Adrien wouldn’t know until he asked her. But asking meant that their new relationship was something strange that he had to question, and he didn’t want Marinette to feel like this was a peculiar development. In fact, he was trying his best to not do anything that would jeopardize their comfort. If that meant keeping himself in the dark about what changed between them, then he’d do it. 

Besides, he wasn’t used to having very many friends, and he wanted to enjoy the new, refreshing ride without over analyzing it. It was so freeing to have another person to joke around with and be friendly with, especially someone that he was beginning to admire. Adrien didn’t think it was all that important to question good things, especially since they came so sparingly. And this was a very, very good thing. 

They moved into their seats in their new classroom and Adrien started to pull his books out. “It’s still really new, dude,” he explained. “I don’t want to start being too deep about it now.”

Nino raised his hands. “Hey, whatever you say, man. It’s your business, I respect that. I’m just saying: when people start seeing you so differently, usually means something big is up. Might be worth asking about when you’re ready.”

The rest of their classmates and their teacher were beginning to filter into the classroom, and Adrien decided to leave the conversation for later. He was sifting through his bookbag and trying to find his homework for class when Marinette and Alya finally came inside and started to walk up to their seats. It seemed like Marinette was trying to find her homework as well because she was frantically shoving aside all of the books and papers inside of her bag while she tried to walk up the stairs. She was pulling out notebooks, flipping through the pages, and scrolling through her tablet in her bag without looking where she was going. He heard Alya warn her to make sure she watched her step before she fell again, but Marinette was preoccupied, muttering to herself and crumpling up pieces of paper that must have been scraps she was confusing for her actual assignment. 

Adrien didn’t have time to warn her when he saw it because it happened so fast. But Marinette was completely oblivious to where her feet were and she accidentally hooked her foot into the straps of Kim’s backpack on the floor by the aisle. She let out a short scream before she pitched forward, dropped her bag and all her papers in front of her, and fell harshly on her knees against the steps of the classroom. 

“Marinette!” Adrien exclaimed, jumping from his seat. 

Everyone was sitting up in their seats and staring at the girl while Chloe was in the front of the class laughing. “Well, it wouldn’t be a full day unless Marinette trips on thin air and falls on her face.”

He decided to ignore her and kneel down next to Marinette. “Are you okay?”

Her papers were still fluttering down the stairs, but she was sitting on the floor clutching her right knee. She winced and shook her head. “I think I just banged my knee.”

Adrien pulled her hand away and frowned when he saw that she didn’t just hit her knee on the stairs — she landed right on the sharp edge of the stair and left a pretty nice gash going all the way across her knee cap. Her tights were ripped and the injury was already bleeding through the material. “That looks pretty bad,” he commented. 

But Marinette waved off the worry and shrugged her shoulders as if it were nothing. She carefully stood up on her feet, keeping noticeably less weight on her right leg. “Don’t worry,” she assured him. “I bang myself against things all the time. I’m fine.”

But the blood was already starting to drip down her leg and Adrien was adamant. “You need to go to the infirmary.” 

“I’ll just clean it in the bathroom with some water,” Marinette insisted. “Really. It’s okay.”

“Hon, Adrien’s right,” Alya said as she scooted into Marinette’s aisle seat and looked down at her friend. “You should get that wrapped up or something. You’re gonna get blood on your shoes.”

Adrien was already standing and getting the attention of their teacher. “Excuse me, Madame Mendeleiev. Do you mind if I take Marinette here to the infirmary? She tripped on the way to her seat and cut her leg pretty badly.”

Marinette muttered, “Look, it’s honestly no big deal.”

But their teacher had already ushered them out of the room and Adrien wasn’t taking no for an answer. He shuffled through the bag on his shoulder, pulled out some tissues he kept in the front pocket, and handed them to Marinette. “Here, wrap some of this around your knee and I’ll get your things.”

Marinette looked like she wanted to say something in protest, but she meekly took the offered paper and tried to readjust her tights and stuff the tissue paper inside to make a makeshift gauze. The lesson was going on behind them while Adrien quietly picked up all of Marinette’s papers, put them neatly back inside her bag, and slung it across his other shoulder. He let Marinette limp down the rest of the stairs in front of him and held the door open for her as they exited the classroom. 

He looked down at Marinette. “You want to hold onto me? You’re limping.”

Marinette stared at him a little nervously before shaking her head. “N-No, I’m good. It just hurts to bend my knee is all.”

“Only if you’re sure.”

She nodded. “I’m sure. I was just going to press on it until it stopped bleeding.”

“It could get infected!” Adrien insisted. “You have to put something on it. Please tell me you don’t do that all the time.”

Marinette snorted. “Actually, I do. This happens a lot….”

Adrien raised a brow. “The falling?”

She sighed. “The falling, the scraping, the burning, the cutting, the banging, the bruising. I’m not exactly coordinated….”

“I’m sure it’s not as bad as you make it sound,” Adrien promised. 

“You should talk to Alya. She’ll back me up. She’s been there for at least half of my dumb accidents.”

Adrien frowned. “Dumb?”

She shrugged back at him and pressed more tissues to her cut. “I mean….I don’t really know what else to call it. Just kinda stupid, getting hurt and falling all the time.”

“That’s not dumb,” Adrien insisted. “Things happen.”

“Yeah, well, they happen to me a lot, so….”

The bitterness in her voice wasn’t lost on him and he couldn’t help but asking. “Everyone has accidents, you know. It’s not a big deal.”

“It is when it happens all the time,” Marinette sighed. “Seriously, most days I’m a walking disaster.”

Adrien chuckled. “Weren’t you the one telling me to learn how to give himself some credit?”

“That’s different….”

Adrien leaned into the door to the infirmary and held it open for Marinette while she limped inside. “If you don’t mind me saying so, I don’t think it is.”

It turned out that all the blood made the cut look a lot worse than it was. Adrien sat in the corner of the office while the nurse cleaned Marinette’s knee, sprayed it with antibacterial, and wrapped it up with a fair bit of bandages. The only casualty was that Marinette had to toss her tights into the garbage which seemed to disappoint her more than the actual injury did, much to Adrien’s amusement. There was too much gauze around her knee and it was preventing her from bending it properly, but it was a rather quick fix and the nurse had sent her off with an exasperated request to be more careful and try not to get sent into the office for the rest of the week. Marinette called the nurse by her first name — which left Adrien wondering just how many times she’s been sent here in the past — and promised as best as she could before Adrien helped her walk out the office. 

They were passing the stairs leading to the second floor when Marinette sighed and sat down on the bottom steps. “Can we stop for a second? It’s starting to sting again.”

“Is it bleeding?” Adrien asked worriedly. 

“No, just tender.” She leaned her head against the banister and sighed. “I’m just gonna sit here for a sec.”

“Don’t you want to go back to class?”

Marinette groaned and made a face. “I’d rather let the embarrassment fizzle out for a little longer.”

Adrien laughed. “I think you’re overreacting.”

“I wish I was.”

Marinette looked serious about not moving from her spot anytime soon, and he didn’t feel like leaving her alone. So he sat down on the step just above the one she was sitting on and stretched his legs out. “At least let me keep you company then.”

She didn’t say anything in response, but Adrien was comfortable sitting in the silence for a bit. He tried to watch Marinette out of the corner of his eye to see if she was nervous or scared to say anything, but it just seemed like she’d suddenly grown quiet and pulled back into herself. She was staring through the bars of the banister at the empty courtyard and clicking her nails together to fill up the quiet space. Adrien still didn’t know Marinette all that well, so he couldn’t quite tell if this was her being melancholic or thoughtful or just taking a moment to relax before she had to face her class again. If this were Nino, he’d scoot over next to him, wrap an arm around his shoulder, and nudge him until he laughed or got him talking about something that would distract him from what was bothering him. But, despite all the progress they made, Adrien and Marinette weren’t quite like that. They could joke about his bad puns without a problem, but that didn’t mean he knew what to do in situations like this where it seemed like Marinette was stewing over something. 

He settled with asking a question that had been on his mind. “Why are you so hard on yourself?” 

Marinette turned her head towards him and blinked in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you were talking about me needing to learn to appreciate myself the other day, but maybe you do too,” Adrien explained. “You seem upset over this, but it was just a trip.”

“When it happens nearly everyday, it’s not just a trip,” Marinette tried to tell him. “Being known as a klutz isn’t exactly uplifting.”

“You’re not a klutz,” Adrien began. 

“You haven’t known me for long enough,” Marinette said right after. “Trust me. This is what people will know me for.”

Her words were so sad yet so sincere that it really made Adrien want to do more for her even though he was sure their new friendship couldn’t justify it. She said something to him about thinking that the things he was passionate about were too small to count as being important. Adrien was starting to wonder if she was doing something similar. Except this time, instead of him thinking he was just mediocre at everything and had nothing he could call a passion, Marinette was thinking that the one thing that marked her as a person was something that was self-deprecating. He couldn’t tell which one was worse, only that he understood why Marinette had tried so hard that day to get through to him. It wasn’t a nice feeling to know that someone you knew thought of themselves and their accomplishments as being so minor in comparison to their insecurities. Perhaps they were a lot more similar than he thought they were. 

“Well,” Adrien said thoughtfully. “When I think of you, I don’t think ‘clumsy.’ I think of a girl who’s good at designing, proud, willing to stick up for people, and happens to be great company. Everything else like clumsiness doesn’t matter in all that.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, actually,” Adrien promised. “I don’t know how well this applies, but one of my photographers always used to tell me this whenever I saw something in my photoshoots that I didn’t like — we’re the best people to hire to look for flaws in ourselves. Most people look at a picture you think is horrible and will see nothing wrong with it. That’s because most people are searching for the good things and not paying mind to the minor, bad things. You don’t think everyone else around you thinks the same way?”

Marinette shrugged. “I dunno.” 

It didn’t seem like she was cheered up at all, and Adrien was starting to feel his confidence deflate. He took a deep breath to calm his nerves and sighed. “I’ve got another compliment. Wanna hear it?”

Marinette didn’t say anything in response to him, so Adrien merely cleared his throat and spoke. “I think you’re an incredibly kind and passionate person. There are so many things you love, so many people you are about, and you always try to do the right thing even if it means going out of your way to get it done. And if someone asked me to describe you to them, that would be how I would do it. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t know you that well. But whether or not you’re clumsy doesn’t matter me in the least. Not in comparison to all the other good things about you.”

For the first time in a few days, Marinette turned to face him and couldn’t stop her cheeks from flushing and betraying her nerves and embarrassment. She stared at him for a long few seconds and didn’t make any attempts to say anything, almost as if what he said had knocked all of her quick and clever responses out of her head and left them too far away for her to grab and rework. For a moment, he thought he’d said something too personal and had scared her off, and was prepared to scramble around to try and fix it, but Marinette finally smiled at him softly. “I appreciate that.”

“It’s the truth,” he shrugged. “I wouldn’t lie to you about this. There are plenty of cool things I can say about you that have nothing to do with what happened in class today. You should start putting them first for yourself too.”

Marinette looked almost proud. “You’re borrowing my advice.”

“It was really good advice.”

Marinette sighed and laughed at herself. “Thanks. Although, some coordination still wouldn’t hurt. I’m tired of getting scars and bruises all the time.”

Adrine laughed with her and let his eyes drop back down to the cut on her leg. It was a lot of gauze for something he hoped wouldn’t leave a mark, although now that Marinette’s legs were bare and he was close enough to see details, he did see remnants of bruises that were almost done yellowing, small cuts that were almost done healing, and a few small scars that were just half a tone darker than the rest of her skin. They looked like the result of someone who liked to bump and bang into things a lot, just like Marinette said. He was about to comment on it before his eyes froze on a mark on the underside of her thigh. 

The only reason he could see was because her tights were off and her good knee was bent so that she could lean her elbow on it. He hadn’t meant to stare at such a strange place for so long, but it was such a strange injury to see there. It was a long cut that traveled from the middle of the back of her thigh all the way down to the bend of her knee. It looked fresh, like it had only happened a couple of days ago, but it looked like it had been an angry scratch when it first happened. He would have been willing to chalk that up to more of Marinette’s clumsiness, but there was something offputting about it. 

He and Ladybug had fought a particularly nasty akuma a couple of days before — Le Jardinier, he called himself. What made him a threat were the two large pairs of gardening shears that he was using to ruin all of the trees, garden, and foliage around Paris out of jealousy. Le Jardinier wielded them with an eerie expertise and they’d both had a few close calls with the sharp blades. During a particularly scary few minutes of their fight, Ladybug had just managed to get out of the way of one of the shears, but the edge had clipped the back of her leg and left her with a long scratch that bled through her costume for the entirety of the fight. He remembered how long it was and he remembered where she’d gotten it. It was in the exact same place on Marinette — the exact same length. 

Adrien must have been staring for a long time because Marinette furrowed her brows at him and asked, “Something wrong?”

He pointed to the back of his own leg. “Where’d you get that scratch?”

He watched her reaction carefully. She checked underneath her own leg, ran a finger along the scar, and hesitated for a few seconds before she answered. She didn’t make eye contact with him. “Dropped a knife when I was helping Mama in the kitchen the other day.”

“Pretty long cut.”

Marinette lifted her head and stared at him strangely. “....yeah. It is.”

Adrien could feel his heart pounding. Oh, so many things things were going through his head, and he was trying to remember to calm down and not let himself jump to conclusions. But this wasn’t just a hunch or a feeling or an impression to go on. This was hard solid proof — something tangible that he could see and easily connect back to something he had seen before as well. Perhaps it really was a coincidence and Adrien was just desperately trying to force two things together for whatever reason. But then again, it could have very easily been one very obvious explanation — an explanation that he was trying to steer away from if only because it was too far fetched for him to deal with, a discovery with too much at stake. 

Marinette looked uncomfortable for reasons different than just being embarrassed by her class, and Adrien suddenly felt incredibly awkward in his own skin, especially because they were alone together and Adrien felt like he was going to explode with emotions that he couldn’t quite understand. Marinette was narrowing her eyes. “What's the matter?”

Adrien blinked and shook his head a little too vigorously. “No! No, no. Nothing’s wrong. I just….yeah, no I was just curious. Blades can leave pretty nasty cuts.”

Marinette nodded slowly. “....knife blades, I’m assuming you meant?”

“Y-Yeah,” Adrien stumbled. “Knife blades. From the kitchen. Because you said you cut yourself cooking.”

“Right….”

Adrien scrambled and looked at the clock above the courtyard and realized that they’d already missed a good portion of their lesson. “Um….so is your knee feeling better? We should probably get to class.”

They didn’t say anything to each other on the way to class, and Adrien found that he didn’t mind in the least. He didn’t trust himself to sound calm. Sitting in the lesson was close to useless because Adrien couldn’t get his brain to focus on what their teacher was saying when his thoughts were racing quicker than he could keep up with them. He wanted to leave. He needed to talk to someone, even if it was just to himself in an empty room. His leg was shaking during the lesson and trying to come to terms with the fact that he wouldn’t be able to go home and think in peace for another few hours was starting to kill him. This was huge. This was way huge. This was way too many pieces fitting together a little too well for it to be ignored. 

All of the random hunches Adrien had been having about Marinette….they may have just turned into hardened clues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for the warm reception this story has gotten. I'm not used to big fandoms so all of the kudos, hits, and comments have been really exciting for me :)
> 
> Read/like/reblog the chapter on Tumblr [here](http://breeeliss.tumblr.com/post/146390094294/marinette-week-2016-little-bits-of-mari)  
> Follow me at breeeliss.tumblr.com


	5. Day 5: Expressions

When Adrien finally reached the privacy of his bedroom that afternoon, he dove for his desk, pulled out a pen and paper, and started making a list. 

He split the page in half, wrote LADYBUG on top of one column and MARINETTE on top of the other. 

He started with the Ladybug column, and started with the obvious things. Earrings. Dark hair, always in pigtails. Blue eyes. Freckles just underneath her mask. Top of her head came right up to the tip of his nose. There. Simple. Obvious and indisputable. 

Then he started drawing arrows from one column to the other. If Ladybug’s earrings were anything like his ring, that meant that she probably never took them off in case there were ever an unexpected situation in which she needed to transform. Marinette’s earrings were similar, although they were darker and plainer, and he was sure plenty of girls had stud earrings. Then again, Adrien’s ring looked different out of his transformation than it did while he was in it, so he couldn’t even in good conscience rule that out completely. He put a question mark next to that one. 

They were definitely the same height, and the hair was easy too. On those days when Marinette pulled her hair into pigtails, it reminded him heavily of Ladybug, right down to the dark color of her hair. The freckles was only something that he’d noticed recently on Ladybug, and that was only because there was a day when an akuma attack had cornered them in a narrow alley which left Adrien close enough to see just a bare hint of light freckles dancing across the bridge of her nose. They were much more obvious on Marinette….but then again, he supposed they’d be hard to see if she happened to have a mask on her face. 

Adrien rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palm. “Oh my god, this is crazy, this is so crazy. This can’t be happening….”

Plagg zipped out of Adrien’s pocket and plopped down on the middle of the page. “Okay, you seriously need to calm down. Your stress is making me stress.”

“Do you blame me?!” Adrien said frantically. “There’s a huge possibility that I’ve been sitting in front of Ladybug this entire time. Who wouldn’t freak out a little bit?”

Plagg frowned at him. “You don’t know that.”

“I know,” Adrien sighed in exasperation. “I don’t know for sure. I won’t know for sure unless she comes out and tells me. But….still, this is as close as I can get without her telling me, right?”

“Not necessarily,” Plagg explained to him again. “Gosh, you’re so uppity. Calm down for a second and think this through, will you?”

“You don’t mean to tell me you actually believe that kitchen knife story, do you?”

“Look, I’m staying out of this!” Plagg said adamantly. “My job is to help you be Chat Noir, not play detective. My suspicions don’t matter. But whether or not I believe it doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t a totally far fetched story.”

Adrien fell backwards and laid out on the floor of his bedroom while staring at the ceiling. “So you don’t believe me?”

Plagg kicked his little leg against Adrien’s temple. “I just said I’m not telling you what I think, you dummy! I’m just saying that maybe you shouldn’t see this as being so definitive. You may not want to think so, but there is a possibility this is just a huge coincidence.”

Adrien sighed. “What makes you think I don’t want to think it’s such a huge coincidence?”

Plagg snorted. “Please. Like you wouldn’t jump at the opportunity of figuring out who’s behind that Ladybug mask. You’re a smitten, lovesick disaster, remember?”

Adrien lightly flicked Plagg on the head in retaliation and watched as he stuck his tongue out at Adrien, flew over the window sill, chowed down on cheese, and started rattling on about dramatic teenagers and ungrateful charges. He tried to ignore all of his unhelpful chattering so that he could think. 

It was a lie if he said that Adrien wasn’t at least a little bit curious about finding out who Ladybug was. It was only natural to think about who it was that he was placing so much trust in every single day of his life, who it was that he admired and adored so deeply. But they made a very stern promise to each other that they’d keep their identities a secret, and Adrien had tried to respect that as much as he could. Adrien had purposefully avoided doing any detective work as Plagg liked to put it. He wasn’t purposefully hunting for evidence even though he liked to postulate for the sake of giving him something to do when he was bored. But hunting for evidence seemed like a betrayal in some way, so Adrien had been sure to steer clear of it. 

There were so many similarities between Marinette and Ladybug, but he’d only noticed them because he’d finally started to notice little things about Marinette that he’d missed before. He was sure that his motivations over the past three weeks had not been out of a desire to figure out who Ladybug was, but merely to learn more about Marinette as a person. That he was sure of and that he would insist fiercely. But now that he was running into this rather peculiar situation where many of Marinette’s and Ladybug’s qualities were starting to bleed into each other, Adrien didn’t know what to do. It almost felt like learning more about Marinette meant betraying Ladybug. It didn’t even matter if Marinette was Ladybug or not. There was a part of his brain that sort of thought she was, and that was enough for him to wonder if his desire to learn about Marinette weren’t at least partly motivated by a desire to get closer to Ladybug. 

But….that seemed to cheapen what he’d had with Marinette. Regardless of Ladybug, Marinette had turned into such an wonderful friend these past few weeks — funny, clever, not afraid of joking around with him, and being so thoughtful towards him whenever he needed it. He valued that, he really did. It made him so happy that he could finally call her a true friend of his. 

It was so confusing that he wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Talking to Marinette tomorrow morning wouldn’t be because he wanted to postulate about Ladybug, that he knew. But he couldn’t deny that he wouldn’t catalogue the things he’s picked up in order to maybe add to the growing collage of random Ladybug facts that may very well form a picture one day. 

How was he supposed to talk to her with this running around in his head all day?

“This is so messy,” Adrien groaned. 

Plagg spoke through a mouthful. “Look at it this way. Life is always more interesting with a little bit of drama.”

Adrien didn’t get a restful sleep that night. He was absently flipping through the Ladyblog like he did every night before he went to bed, but sometimes he stopped at a photo that reminded him of Marinette and vice versa which left his mind racing about how he was meant to interact with his classmate after this. He didn’t want to make things awkward between the two of them, but at the same time he didn’t know how he was going to make himself act like nothing was wrong or like nothing was discovered. It was going to be near impossible and Adrien spent most of the time staring up at his ceiling and agonizing over it. 

When he walked into class the next morning, he immediately felt Marinette’s eyes on him. 

They were different from how they usually were — either filled with mirth or exasperation. Suddenly he felt like a science experiment under the gaze of her stare, and she looked very much like she was trying to decode something very complicated that she couldn’t quite figure out. Maybe it was because he had acted so strange yesterday after he saw her scratch. At least Adrien hoped that’s what it was. It was bad enough that he was agonizing over what he’d found out the other day, he wasn’t sure if he could also handle Marinette acting weird around him. 

“Morning,” Marinette said. 

Adrien nodded stiffly. “M-Morning. How’s your knee?”

“It’s going to scar, but that’s nothing new. Remind me to photocopy Alya’s notes for the both of us. We missed a good part of class yesterday.”

“Thanks,” Adrien said absently. He was staring at her freckles, the ones that would most definitely be almost completely covered by a mask if she were to put one on. Her hair was back in pigtails today, and they looked exactly like Ladybug’s. Same length. Same style. “But don’t worry about it. It was my pleasure to help you.”

Marinette smirked. “Yeah. I bet it was.”

“What?”

Marinette shrugged. “I feel like putting yourself out for other people is something of a status quo for you.”

Adrien let his eyes dart down to himself self-consciously and readjusted the strap on his backpack. “How do you know that?”

Marinette pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and kept her eyes down on her notebook when she answered. “...just a feeling.”

“A feeling?”

“Yeah….” Marinette said absently. She shook her head a little bit. “Anyway, Alya wanted to study with Nino and you for our history exam next week when we go to the library. Would you be interested?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Adrien promised. “Should make it go by easier.”

“Yeah, I need some help with it,” Marinette commented. “I’m not too good at figuring out some of these chapters.”

Adrien shrugged unconcerned. “You’re smart and you're good at thinking on your feet though. You’ll be fine.”

“And how do you know that.”

Because he witnessed her thinking on her feet every time they fought an akuma and defeated it with the help of her being able to decode what it was she was meant to use her Lucky Charms for. But he couldn’t very well say that, and he couldn’t even say for sure if he was directing that comment at the right person anymore. But the slip already came out and there was nothing to be done about it. “....uh. A….A feeling.”

Marinette bit on the edge of her tongue. “Right….a feeling.”

Adrien blinked in confusion. “Um….right. Yeah. Um. So, yeah, studying in the library, that’s cool. I guess I’ll see you there. Next period. ”

“With puns on reserve I assume?”

“Well, it wouldn’t feel right to not have them.”

“No, it wouldn’t be.”

Adrien almost missed it, but Marinette’s eyes drifted down to the ring on his finger for a moment before she shook her head, smiled at him, and went back to looking at her notebook. And maybe it was nothing, and he probably wouldn’t have noticed it on any other day. But he was also letting his eyes linger on Marinette’s earrings and suddenly the energy between the two of them felt so strange and so familiar at the same time. He turned around sharply and went into his own seat before he said or did anything else that could possibly make the air between them anymore tense. He was turning the ring around on his finger and he had to try particularly hard to keep himself from turning around in his seat during the lesson. 

He was acting strange, and it was making Marinette act strange. Or maybe it was vice versa, or both things at once, but now Adrien was worried that all of his scrutiny from yesterday had made her uncomfortable and now they couldn’t joke around with each other in the mornings. He could have easily been overreacting, but he almost preferred for Marinette to start stuttering and stumbling around him again instead of this. This was strange. This was different. This was the two of them not knowing how to talk or be around each other. It felt like a step backward and then some. Adrien sort of wished that he hadn’t noticed anything at all. 

By the time their classes had passed and the four friends made it to the library to quietly study together, Adrien found himself doodling his notebook and not really being able to concentrate on his work. Marinette was sitting directly across from him, and it looked like she was just sketching out skirts and dresses in the margins and trying to stay away from doing her work either. He wanted to ask her what was wrong so that he could figure out what it was that he did to mess up their dynamic, because now it felt different and muddled by something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. 

A few minutes passed before Adrien dared to look up at her. He waited until Marinette had noticed that his head had lifted and tried to keep eye contact with her when she met his gaze. Adrien didn’t want to say anything — they were in the library, their friends were nearby, he truthfully didn’t know how to put what he was feeling into words because it was just so darn complicated. But he looked at her questioningly, as if asking her to tell him what the matter was, what had changed, why was she acting different, and maybe even hoping if she could somehow tell him why he couldn’t get his thoughts together. It was all he could think to do at this point. 

Marinette held his gaze for a few moments, but her eyes warmed up, her mouth curled into a very slight smile, and she shook her head. Adrien smirked. It was a look that Ladybug gave him a lot — one that usually came whenever Chat Noir made a mistake or accidentally set their akuma missions back a few steps. It was that look that said everything was okay and that all was forgiven. More importantly, it was what Adrien liked to dub her ‘Ladybug Isn’t Mad At You’ look, which was a look that always filled him with such relief and reassurance. 

He and Ladybug had gotten to a point where they spoke to each other through expressions rather well. It was a necessity born out of needing to communicate quickly and without letting the enemy know. It was a way of communicating plans without actually having to voice them so that they could keep the element of surprise. It also just came from knowing each other so well, so Adrien was almost a little pleased that Marinette understood what he was trying to say to her. It also upped her likelihood of being Ladybug in his head. 

Marinette’s expression switched into one of concern — her eyebrows were raised, her eyes were filled with pity, and her mouth was pulled into a very slight pout as if she were pleading with him to tell her something. But he merely smiled tightly and shook his head back, assuring her right back that all was well. She let herself laugh softly while she nodded her head and continued to smile at him. 

In an attempt to try and lighten the mood again, Adrien turned his book to Marinette, pointed to the page, pointed to himself, and waggled his eyebrows, hoping that she remembered his ‘fine print’ pick up line from the other day. It took her a couple of seconds but Marinette’s eyes immediately widened in comprehension and her face twisted into something of such immediate and harsh disgust that Adrien couldn’t help but snort out loud at the sight. He could barely see the librarian glancing in their direction, but Adrien tried to keep the noise down to a minimum. 

Seeing as how they weren’t getting anything done anyhow, Adrien was trying his best to replicate the face she sent him in order to try and get her to laugh too. The result must have been either incorrect or just plain sad, because Marinette was laughing, shaking her head, and staring at him much like she was staring at him the other day when he was giving his puns to her — something full of amusement but exasperation. Adrien looked up, shrugged innocently, and then gave Marinette a look that perfectly suggested how little he regretted his puns. 

They spent the rest of the library period doing that — just making random faces and expressions at each other for lack of anything else to do. Adrien was sure Nino and Alya were noticing, but he didn’t really care all that much. They were baring teeth and sticking out tongues and doing eyebrow tricks and trying to mouth things unsuccessfully across the table which led to some pretty hilarious close calls where Marinette was chortling into the collar of her jacket and Adrien was hiding his face in his arms to keep his laughter from getting out of control. At least she wasn’t mad at him, he thought in relief. He wasn’t sure what on Earth they were doing, why they were doing it, or why it had started. But in the wake of all this strangeness surrounding them, they were entitled to act a little ridiculous. Adrien was in the mood for a laugh. It distracted him from his torment from yesterday afternoon and made him forget why Marinette was acting so odd in the first place. 

Marinette looked around the library, lowered her voice as much as if would go, and whispered, “I didn’t meant to make you think I was upset this morning.”

Adrien shook his head. “Just glad you’re okay.”

“It’s been a….long week for me,” Marinette admitted.

Every little lift of her eyebrow and quirk of her lip screaming something at him that reminded him of the expressions that Ladybug made everyday. God, he couldn’t think of any other possibilities, he really couldn’t. He understood what Plagg meant about being careful, but he could easily and subtly prove this to himself and finally have an answer that wouldn’t keep him up at night. Plus, wouldn’t that be an amazing discovery? Wouldn’t Marinette be such a nice fit for the role, and it wouldn’t make the most logical sense? He so desperately wanted it to be her. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter, but if it was….if it was it would change how he saw everything. 

Adrien wanted to test it so bad, just as a way of satiating his own torment and making getting some sort of confirmation for his thoughts. So in a show of impulsiveness, he collected a little bit of the freeing attitude he reserved for his time in costume, took Marinette’s hand from the top of her notebook, and pressed a very gentle, very careful kiss against her knuckles. 

Her entire body sat up straighter and her eyes widened the moment his lips made contact. Adrien kept his lips near her hand and waited for her to say something to him in return — to pull her hand away, to ask him what he was doing, to collapse into a mess after she was done letting him indulge. Marinette’s eyes were darting to his ring again, and she was switching back and forth between the ring and between his eyes. She sighed out in what looked to be like relief before Adrien felt his heart stop. 

Marinette took her hand back, pressed her index finger against Adrien’s nose, and gently pushed him back until he was sitting back in his chair, looking at her in a bit of bewilderment. He wrinkled his nose and shook his head just a little bit. That was a Ladybug habit. Every time Chat Noir tried to spoil Ladybug with sweet words and actions, she’d always push him away by his nose. It was something they’d done dozens of times. It was a routine of theirs, something that only the two of them understood, something that was so sweet and familiar from their friendship. Adrien’s heart was beating quickly in his chest, and suddenly his head started to make the obvious connections for him. 

Marinette smirked at him. “Calm down there.”

He was waiting for the ‘kitty cat’ at the end of the sentence, but he merely shrugged his shoulders and pulled his history book closer to him. “You break my heart.” My Lady. 

“I’m sure you can last being serious for a few more minutes.”

And suddenly, Adrien got slapped in the face with his next agonizing realization. Suddenly all the tension made so much sense and he almost wanted to hit himself because of course that’s what it was. 

Did Marinette know?

Adrien winked before sending a smirk Marinette’s way, trying to hide the sudden nervous excitement that was threatening to burst out of him. “For you? I’ll put in a valiant effort.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one's a little late. Had to deal with a little bit of drama, but I figured I'd still try to push a chapter out anyway to keep with the spirit of things. 
> 
> Read/like/reblog the chapter on Tumblr [here](http://breeeliss.tumblr.com/post/146441012549/marinette-week-2016-little-bits-of-mari)  
> Follow me at breeeliss.tumblr.com


	6. Day 6: Bravery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that I wound up falling behind. I went to the NYC Pride parade and broke my toe!! :D So that didn't leave me much time to write. But Day 7 will hopefully be up before tomorrow morning which should complete this little series.

Tell her. 

It was slamming in his head and practically begging to get out, and Adrien almost indulged the thought purely out of pity. It would have been so easy to just blurt it out in that moment because it felt right. She was right across from him and still smirking, still holding up her finger as a mild warning in case he decided to try and charm her again, and she looked so lovely to him sitting there only a couple of feet away. It made his heart hurt and ache in a way that made him smile and rub his chest for fear of it bursting. He wanted to do something reckless — like pull her into a fierce hug, press his lips to her temples and mutter into her ears how relieved and happy he was, wave his arms around and tell her who he really was. The only reason he didn’t was because Nino and Alya were darting glances at them three feet down the table and keeping them from saying anything incriminating. 

He felt very much like he was staring at her through a glass wall — she was perfectly clear in front of him, close enough to touch, but he couldn’t reach out to her no matter how hard he tried. Adrien swallowed and heard his voice come out hoarser than he meant for it to. “Can I say something?” he whispered. “Before I get too scared to say it.”

Marinette sucked in a breath before she licked her lips and bit down on the bottom corner. Her eyes looked scared but something about the way she was leaning towards him and lifting her chin made her seem like she was at least partly eager to hear what he had to say. She was conflicted, as was he. This was either the best or worst decision the two of them could make, but everything between them was still only speculation until one of them broke the barrier between their two identities and let them mix together. They could deal with the fallout later, and Adrien was perfectly comfortable with that. He just wanted to say it. One second. A breath. A heartbeat. And then it would all be clear. 

She dipped her head into half a nod. “What is it?”

God, please tell him he found her. Please tell him that this was it, and that everything would finally come together perfectly, and he’d get to be happier than he’d ever been. “I wanted to say….”

Had his nerves not let the rest of the words clog up in his throat, he would’ve had time to tell her. 

But the moment Adrien paused to collect himself, a chorus of screams rang out from the corner of the library and snapping the two of them out of their small, quiet moment. Chairs were scraping against the hardwood floor and tables were being shoved as students started sprinting out of the library. Adrien was already standing up from his seat on high alert and looking around the library for the source of the trouble. Marinette’s body was completely turned around and staring in between the rows of books behind them. Then from the left, Adrien heard something that sounded strangely like a large pile of fluttering leaves hitting the floor before he heard three, maybe four voices sobbing uncontrollably immediately after. 

Adrien was about to turn the corner to see what the commotion was before the bookshelf to his left was suddenly blasted against the opposite wall, so close to hitting him that Adrien felt his hair ruffle from the gust of wind as it passed. He jumped back sharply with Marinette, Nino, and Alya slowly stepping back behind him while a tall, dark figure turned the corner. 

He cursed in his head the moment he realized it was another akumatized victim. This one was maybe six whole inches taller than him — which was going to make him a joy to fight — decked out in formal wear that was completely pitch black, right down to the silk gloves he seemed to be wearing. But the truly terrifying part of him were the vines of thorns that were wrapping around his arms, torso, and legs and seemed to be moving along with the rest of his muscles after every step he took. His entire face was sickly pale and screwed in fury and sadness, making him look like someone lost in grief and anger. In his right hand was a white rose with a long, straight stem that looked very much like a cane or a wand. He growled from the back of his throat, pointed the rose at another corner of the library where three girls were crouched and trembling before a burst of white rose petals and leaves burst from the tip of the rose in his hands and hit all of them straight in their chests. Once the petals started to fall around them, they all fell to their knees and started wailing and sobbing without being able to help themselves. 

“You think it’s funny to toy with a person’s heart like it’s nothing but garbage, huh? Well now it’s your turn to see how it feels! L’Arnacoeur will make sure you understand what heartbreak is!”

The rose was pointed over his shoulder and another group of students huddling underneath one of the study tables were immediately reduced to tears as L’Arnacoeur blasted another bookshelf into the opposite wall. “Colette!” he was crying out into the rafters. “I want you to feel my pain, Colette! Come out and finally feel what it’s like to play with people’s feelings and crush them like a monster!”

Adrien heard Alya speaking up behind him. “Crap, you don’t think he means the Colette in the class across the hall from us, do you?”

Nino was pressed against the wall and trying to inch his way to the door. “Didn’t that dude in that class totally have a crush on her? Mikael, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Marinette said sternly. “Mikael Dujardin. He came into the bakery yesterday asking for chocolates for a gift for someone. I wonder if that’s him….”

Adrien didn’t have to wonder. That seemed like a solid enough lead to him. Besides, it didn’t much matter what his name was. He needed to find a place to transform and quickly so that he could prevent this villain from harming anymore students. Plagg was getting restless in his pocket and Adrien knew that he needed to act quickly before things really started to go south. His eyes darted to Marinette, and her eyes were darting to one of the exits of the library to her left, unsure if she was eyeing it to escape or eyeing it to get privacy. Ladybug wasn’t here yet, and he supposed she needed to show up soon. 

Another bookshelf had come flying straight for him and he only had time to grab Nino and push him off to the side before the bookshelf came careening into the wall they were leaning against. Marinette and Alya jumped to the other side of the splintered shelf, but Adrien couldn’t see past the wreckage to see where they had gone or where they had landed. He didn’t have time to wait around anymore. He grabbed Nino’s wrist, pulled him towards the door they were inching towards earlier, and shoved the two of them into the hallway. Nino started running towards the entrance of the school when Adrien sprinted in the opposite direction.

“I’m going to try and open the other library entrances and get people out,” Adrien shouted. “You go get help.”

He turned down three hallways before slipping into a utility closet, letting Plagg out of the pocket of his shirt, and quickly transforming. He leaped out of the closet and bounded back towards the library on all fours and heading up the stairs towards the balconies on the next floor. The sounds of broken bookshelves and crying students were still coming from the lower floors and it was only now that Adrien saw that L’Arnacoeur was using the thorned vines wrapping around his body to curl around the furniture and fling it around in an attempt to look for Colette. If Adrien could lead L’Arnacoeur to an area of the school that wasn’t so saturated with students, he could keep him busy until Ladybug showed up and could purify the akuma. The trick was to figure out a way to distract him and lead him away. This akuma seemed particularly vicious and seemed very dead set on their mission. 

He jumped onto the bannister of the balcony and whistled loudly. L’Arnacoeur’s head immediately turned towards Adrien and growled when he started condescendingly smirking. 

“My oh my, you’re certainly putting everyone here into a ‘thorny’ situation,” Adrien laughed. “Temper tantrum much?”

L’Arnacoeur pointed menacingly. “Don’t get in my way!”

Adrien stroked his chin and twirled his tail around in his hand.”You know, a close friend of mine mentioned something about me not having any personal boundaries. So we might just have to agree to disagree on that one.”

“If you’re not going to stay out of my way, then you leave me no choice!” L’Arnacoeur held out his hand and the vines from around his arm immediately uncoiled and shot towards Adrien at an alarming speed. Adrien quickly pulled his staff from his belt, extended it, and spun it around until the vines were tangled and knotted around his staff. He spun it horizontally and extended it even further until L’Arnacoeur was harshly pulled sideways and flung into the wall away from a group of students who were jogging towards the stairs to the balcony to try and escape the library. 

“Well that was rude!” Adrien exclaimed. “A little too soon for us to be getting into such a ‘prickly’ friendship, don’t you think?”

The banter did its job and L’Arnacoeur started aiming at Adrien again. He pulled his staff back and leaped across the remaining bookshelves until he slid out of the library through one of the doors. He sprinted down the hallway and grinned in relief when the vines were creeping in on him out of his peripheral vision, which meant that L’Arnacoeur was following him. Now the only thing left to do was to find somewhere better to let his fight happen. 

The courtyard was approaching ahead of him and Adrien decided it was the best he could do. It was bigger, less crowded, and would leave Ladybug more room to do some of her long range attacks. Perfect. 

Of course that plan went completely out of the window once he saw Marinette in the corner of the courtyard comforting what looked to be a girl her age trembling in the corner and hiding behind her backpack. 

Adrien bounded towards the two of them, carefully eyeing L’Arnacoeur who was approaching the courtyard and quickly. “Ladies, as lovely as it is to see you both, this is not the best place to be right now.”

Marinette frowned. “I gathered that much. But Colette won’t move.”

Ah, great. Make things even more complicated. His bad luck was really kicking it into high gear all of a sudden. “What do you mean she won’t move?”

Collete spoke up from the corner. “I-I-I only said that I w-wasn’t interested,” she said as she kept trembling. “I didn’t think he’d be so mad! I’m so sorry, please make him go away….”

Marinette hooked her arm around Collete’s. “It’s not your fault. But we have to move. L’Arnacoeur is looking for your and we need to get you somewhere where he can’t find you until he’s stopped.”

“Which would be a heck of a lot easier if a certain elusive little lady would show up to add some much needed muscle….” Adrien said slyly, being careful to make note of Marinette’s reaction. 

Marinette rolled her eyes and looked up at Adrien as she managed to pull Colette onto her feet. “She’ll show up,” she said with conviction. “But I’m sure you’re more than capable of handling him yourself until then. No need to beg for help.”

Adrien scoffed and the slight dig. “Oh please, princess, you doubt me? I think I’m more than comfortable trying to stop — !”

The vines had wrapped around his waist and suddenly he was flying backwards. His back hit the stone wall on the opposite side of the room and impact knocked the wind out of him for a few seconds. He was sure that would have resulted in a few bruised ribs had his suit not been helping in absorbing most of the damage. However, by the time he managed to get a sufficient amount of air in his lungs, the vines were already wrapped tightly around him and trapped his arms to his side. L’Arnacoeur pulled Adrien closer to him, smiling cruelly the entire time. “Well, well, looks like I’ve caught a stray.”

Adrien rolled his eyes. “Oh, haha, very funny. You know, with all respect my friend, keep the jokes and the puns to the experts, will ya?”

That seemed to have been the wrong thing to say because the vines tightened around him painfully and he coughed from the effort. The thorns were digging into his suit and making him grit his teeth in pain. Well, this certainly wasn’t good. The only possibly redeemable part of this position was that his miraculous would be out of reach until he was let go, but he was pretty sure that L’Arnacoeur was focused on completing his own personal agenda before he even bothered with collecting the miraculouses. Sure enough, L’Arnacoeur kept Adrien tightly bound in an armful of vines while he turned to the back of the courtyard and started eyeing Marinette and Colette who were backed against the wall. No Ladybug yet. Although at this point, that made a whole lot of sense considering Marinette was also conveniently in the same room as him. He couldn’t do anything in his current position, so he did the only thing he could do at the moment. “Princess,” he coughed out. “Now would be a really good time to take Colette and run away now!”

But Marinette wasn’t listening. Instead she was pushing Colette behind her and facing off against the villain with a kind of stupid, childish bravery that Adrien would have respected in any other circumstance had their lives literally not been on the line here. He struggled against the holds of the vines, trying to see if he could reach his staff to get out or maybe even hook one of his claws against the vines to try and cut himself out of them. But he wasn’t having any luck and he could already feel L’Arnacoeur moving towards where Colette was standing. “Now you’ll get yours, Colette. Now you’ll know how it feels to have your heart ripped out.”

Adrien was desperately trying to get a hand free before he heard a strong voice from underneath him. “No one’s getting anything! You stay away from her!”

He craned his neck around and down to see Marinette —- not holding any weapons, not transformed into any superheroines — glaring up at L’Arnacoeur with her hands on her hips and her stance wide while Colette stayed hiding behind her. The thorny vines were already creeping along the floor and along the walls like animals that were ready pounce on Marinette any minute, but Marinette wasn’t budging. 

“You’d do well to stay out of our business unless you want to feel my pain as well!” L’Arnacoeur snapped. 

“Your heart was broken so you want others to have theirs broken too?” Marinette called to him. “What will that solve? It won’t make you feel better. The pain will still be there.”

Adrien was raising a brow at what looked to be the beginning of a monologue, but Marinette darted his eyes to him, quickly looked downward, and turned back to the villain before he noticed the look. She was stalling him, waiting for Adrien to get himself out. He tried to puff out his chest a little more, ignoring the pain from the thorns to try and get the vines to give him a little bit of slack so that he could open his palm and cut through the vines with his claws. He was just starting to wriggle his fingers while L’Arnacoeur started growling at Marinette. 

“You don’t understand what it’s like to carry this around,” L’Arnacoeur muttered. He pointed his staff at Colette and the thorns from the other arm practically writhed on their vines. “You don’t know what it’s like to have the person you admired for almost a year treat your feelings like were just an annoyance.”

Marinette was eyeing the thorns and the rose carefully, and Adrien could see her nerves clearly, but she didn’t let it stretch into her voice. “You can’t expect people to feel the same for you. You shouldn’t be mad at her. You should respect her feelings as well and not make her feel guilty like this.”

Adrien’s index finger was out of his fist, and he tried to snag his claw onto a vine. It took him a few tries, but he managed to cut straight through one of them without L’Arnacoeur noticing. He looked to Marinette and nodded to her as she nodded back kept Colette behind her. 

“I loved her!” L’Arnacoeur shouted. “And she rejected me in front of the entire class to embarrass me! She must know what that feels like!”

“Revenge is not the way to solve this,” Marinette insisted. 

L’Arnacoeur was about to snap back at her before he paused, tilted his head as if he were listening to someone else’s voice, a voice that no one else could here, before he shook his straightened up and glared at Marinette. “If you’re not going to get out of my way, then you leave me no choice.” The rose was already lifted and aimed straight for Marinette’s chest. Adrien cut through the last other vines around him and leaped. 

L’Arnacoeur looked shocked to see his vines fall away and Adrien used that two second hesitation to jump down, grab both Marinette and Colette, and sprint to the left before the rush of petals and roses hit any of them. He found a closet full of sports equipment and pushed Colette inside of it unceremoniously to give her a hiding place that would have to do for the moment. He picked Marinette up again, flung her on his back, and bounded up the side of the wall of the courtyard just as L’Arnacoeur spotted them and aimed vines and petals and leaves in their direction. He sprinted across the balconies of the courtyard until he pushed himself inside another hallway and quickly deposited Marinette off of his back. 

“Thanks for the save, princess,” he said breathlessly. “You truly are a miracle.”

“I wouldn’t have had to do anything if you’d learn the proper time and place for puns,” she frowned. 

Adrien shrugged and pulled his staff out. “Eh, life without puns is a life I don’t want to live. Would love to debate this point to you further, but duty calls,” he winked. He was about to turn back around and keep distracting L’Arnacoeur until he turned around, swallowed, and said something kind of stupid. “There should be an empty classroom behind you. Give you plenty of privacy.”

Marinette looked at him with wide eyes, blinked, and nodded before she turned around and slammed into the empty classroom. Adrien smirked, entered the courtyard as loudly as he could, and started playing cat and mouse with the akuma for only a few more seconds before Ladybug bursted through the door that he’d just entered through. 

The classroom door that he’d pointed out to Marinette was empty and wide open, and Adrien tried not to fist pump in victory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read/like/reblog the chapter on Tumblr [here](http://breeeliss.tumblr.com/post/146553182679/marinette-week-2016-little-bits-of-mari)  
> Follow me at breeeliss.tumblr.com


	7. Day 7: Alter-Ego

Their fist bump had a different feel to it this time. 

When Ladybug purified the akuma and threw her lucky charm in the sky to reverse the damage that had been done, they fell back into the habit of their little ritual because at this point, it was like breathing, just like being together always was. But that was because Ladybug and Chat Noir didn’t have to decode or analyze their trust in each other — it was always apparent, always explicit. Perhaps out of necessity at first because what partners could possibly call themselves so if they didn’t trust one another? But Adrien found that while it may have been inevitable, it was also a natural progression. 

He trusted Ladybug with his life, and she had explicitly told him that she trusted him with hers. They were the best of friends, and there were no strange rituals surrounding their ability to understand each other. Laughing with her, hugging her, teasing her, and being with her filled him with happiness that he couldn’t understand, and he knew by intuition that Ladybug felt the same. 

But now they weren’t just Ladybug and Chat Noir standing in front of each other after a tough battle. Now they were Marinette and Adrien — two classmates who were only just beginning to become friends, hadn’t even contemplated such lofty concepts like trust and partnership, had only just discovered the ease between them, who still had a lot to learn about one another despite how educational the past few weeks had been once Adrien had allowed himself to be more attentive. 

But the problem was that this wasn’t completely true because Marinette and Adrien were still Ladybug and Chat Noir, but mashing those two pairs together became confusing and frustrating. They knew each other, but they didn’t. They trusted each other, but they didn’t. They were longtime friends, but they weren’t. 

That confusion was all present as their fists stayed pressed together far longer than they were used to, and the confidence that they usually pinned each other with was mixed in with this strange vulnerability when they realized that, for the first time in a very long time, Chat Noir and Ladybug didn’t really know what to say to one another, let alone what they were meant to be doing next. 

Adrien used Cataclysm only a minute before Ladybug used Lucky Charm, so she’d hit her first beep by the time he had reached his second. There was so much they needed to talk about and they didn’t have the time to do it. Ladybug dropped her hand first, filled her chest with air, and released it with a familiar chuckle. “Notre Dame in fifteen minutes?”

He pretended to play stupid. “And the occasion for this secret lover’s rendezvous?”

Ladybug smirked and wagged her finger at him. “Don’t get any ideas, kitty cat. You might hurt that big head of yours.”

Adrien laughed. “Clever one, my dear Ladybug. You sure know how to humble a man.”

“A man or a boy?”

Adrien scoffed. “You look at this body, which may I remind you is the result of close to a year of death-defying exercise, and tell me that it belongs to a boy.”

“Oh dear, I do think that head of yours just got a little bigger.”

“More space for my quality puns so as far as I’m concerned, that’s a win for me.”

She always claimed she found his humor and his cockiness exasperating, but if it at least did one thing on very special occasions, it made her laugh. That kind of belly laughing that made her bend over at the waist from the effort because she couldn’t hold it together, just like she was doing now. Sometimes he was lucky to get a smile — because, he had to privately admit, he could get to be rather too much — but he really appreciated in this moment where everything seemed so unsure. Then again, Adrien knew he could always count on Ladybug to make things better. 

Their miraculouses beeped again at the same time, and Ladybug was already pulling her yoyo out. She swung onto the second floor of the courtyard before jumping out one of the windows and zipping off onto the buildings. Adrien quickly bounded back into the library, finding it empty but with his bookbag right where he left it before the attack. School looked like it was cancelled as it often was after akuma attacks that happened within the building, which meant it was safe and pulled out a small tupperware of camembert before releasing his transformation. 

Plagg sighed in happiness at the sight of the snack and held up a big chunk of cheese before eyeing Adrien. “Ugh, wait a minute. I know that look. My snack has a time limit, doesn’t it?”

Adrien smirked. “I think you’re more than capable of scarfing down in ten minutes. I’ve seen you eat more in less time.”

“That’s not the point, you silly boy. It’s called savoring your food.” He put the entire chunk into his mouth and chewed in annoyance. “You’re lucky I like you and am willing to sacrifice my precious snack time to help you flirt.”

“If you do this for me, I have an entire wheel at home waiting for you. Cross my heart.”

Once Plagg was full, Adrien quickly bounded outside and onto the rooftops to reach Notre Dame in record time. When he got there, Ladybug was doing silly little yoyo tricks while balancing on the one of the flying buttresses. He slunk quietly on a neighboring buttress while her back was turned to him and laid out across the thin beam. He whistled a small little tune until Ladybug turned towards him. “Cool tricks, cutie.”

Ladybug smirked deviously. “You wish you looked this good.”

Adrien sighed and put a hand to his heart, leaning prostrate across the buttress like a jilted lover. “Ever since I met you, I’ve been wishing it every single day of my life.”

Ladybug snorted before she remembered something. “Wait a minute. You owe me a compliment.”

“Huh?”

“Today. You didn’t offer me your daily ‘love yourself’ compliment. You’re dropping the ball and being all self-deprecating again. So come on. I’m bracing myself. Let’s go.”

Adrien smiled and laughed heartily in sweet relief. Because it basically confirmed that this was Marinette standing in front of him, and that Marinette knew that this was Adrien laying out across from her. It was something he sort of already knew, but the certainty with which he could finally say it at least simplified things just a little bit and removed just a small bit of uncertainty. He stroked his chin in contemplation and smiled widely. “Did I ever tell you that I think I sat in some sugar today?”

Marinette smiled and covered her face with one hand. “My God….”

“Because I have a sweet ass,” he winked. 

Marinette gave him a thumbs down. “Boo!! Corny!”

“Is it a lie though?”

“I’m not answering that.”

“Want me to flip over so you can see it better?”

“If you flip over, I’ll kick your ass, not ogle it.”

“You can’t do that! It’s insured! You’ll ruin its value!”

Marinette swung over on her yoyo and flew over him as if to kick him, but Adrien quickly flipped to the underside of the buttress before falling down to the walkway just underneath. Marinette landed only a few feet away from him before she ran straight for him. Adrien cackled when he ran down the walkway and felt Marinette jump onto his back to poke at his cheeks and try to kick him in his rear end. But he grabbed her thighs to keep her legs still and almost lost his balance when she tried to wriggle away from him. They ran around the cathedral for a few minutes like a bunch of children, Marinette trying to tackle him and Adrien slipping away before she got too much of a lead on him. It ended with Marinette sneaking up on him from above, kicking him straight in his butt, and collapsing on top of him once he inevitably fell down. 

The two of them were breathless with laughter as Adrien laid out spread eagle on his back and Marinette laid out perpendicular to him with her legs draped over his stomach. One of his hands were resting on one of her knees and he was drumming on her knee cap absently while they tried to catch their breath. They weren’t saying anything, and Adrien supposed it was easy to chalk it up to exhaustion. But he also knew that the two of them didn’t know where to start the conversation they desperately needed to have. After all, there was no way they could just go on like normal and leave all this unsaid. 

Marinette decided to bite the bullet first. “When did you figure it out?”

Adrien shrugged. “For sure? Not until today. Although, I’ve had my suspicions since the detective play Nino was doing.”

“Really?”

“It was the way you were looking at me. Plus standing up to Chloe. Plus the scratch on your leg from our last battle. Plus all the gross faces you make whenever you hear my jokes. Which, seriously, we need to work on that, because you need to have a better appreciation for fine examples of comedy.”

Marinette pinched his shoulder. “I’m awaiting the day you impress me with bated breath.” She was tapping her toes together before she asked him, “What made you know for sure?”

“Only Ladybug bumps my nose like that,” Adrien explained. “Plus Ladybug appears right after Marinette bolts. And, you pretty much just confirmed it.”

She made a noise that Adrien couldn’t attach an emotion to. “And here I thought I was being careful.”

“You were,” Adrien assured you. “It wasn’t like it was obvious. I guess….I guess I just started paying attention to you in class more recently. It was just little bits of you that caught my attention, and when I put them all together….well, I got Ladybug.”

“Huh.”

Adrien nudged her knee. “How did you find out?”

“Later than you did,” Marinette explained. “I’ll admit, the puns gave most of it away. When we were sitting by the Seine, you seemed a little like Chat Noir then — talented and one of the best partners I could ever have, yet still thinks that he’s not as good as other people. Always comparing. Just a little self-conscious. Which, if we’re going to work on my pun appreciation, we’re gonna work on that with you. And then you pointed out the scratch on my leg and I thought, ‘Now why would he pick that out of everything else?’ Then, like you said. Rolled up bits and pieces of you into one picture and got Chat Noir.”

Adrien hummed. “Well, if we’re working on my confidence and working on your sense of humor, then this daily compliment thing kills two birds with one stone.”

“Yippee….” Marinette deadpanned with a smirk. 

Adrien thought back to the way he found out about Marinette’s alter-ego, how she found out about his, and couldn’t help but laugh a little in disbelief. “We’re idiots….”

Marinette snorted. “Why?”

He lifted her legs off of him and readjusted himself so that he was lying right next to her, shoulder to shoulder. He turned his head to look at her and she did the same. “I feel like had we just paid attention to each other just a little bit more, we would have figured it out. It was right there in front of us and we didn’t see it. That sounds so silly to me.”

“There are none so blind as those who do not wish to see,” Marinette said seriously. 

“That’s the thing,” Adrien started to explain. “Even in the beginning, for just a little moment, even when I wasn’t even a quarter of the way sure you were Ladybug, I wanted you to be Ladybug. It made sense to me. And honestly, now that I know, I wouldn’t want it to be anyone. I couldn’t imagine it.”

Marintee was fiddling with one of her pigtails. “It wouldn’t make sense to me,” she admitted quietly. “If you look at the two of us from the outside, we’re so disparate.”

“I don’t think so,” Adrien commented. “Okay, so Marinette can’t swing from the rooftops with yoyos. Marinette can’t magically reverse time — ”

“Marinette is clumsy. Marinette isn’t brave. Marinette is ordinary. Marinette isn’t a hero.” She said all this with a straight face, as if all of her self-defeating qualities were second nature at this point. “That doesn’t really scream Ladybug to me.”

“Okay, again, you also get pretty self-deprecating,” Adrien pointed out. “Marinette is incredibly brave if that whole stunt this morning with L’Arnacoeur wasn’t apparent enough. Standing up to an akuma victim as a civilian? That’s Ladybug-level badassery if I do say so myself.” She looked like she wanted to contradict the statement, but Adrien didn’t let her interrupt him. “Marinette is the complete opposite of ordinary. Her designing, the way she sticks up for her friends, the way she stands up for what she believes in, the fact that she’s funny….sounds pretty special to me. And maybe you’re not a hero in the Paris-wide, superpower, Ladybug sense when you’re Marinette….but if making someone’s day better by decking out in pink out of solidarity or giving them a pep talk when they need it most isn’t heroic, then I don’t know what is.”

He smirked at her. “Besides, personally? I see nothing wrong with the clumsiness. It’s just another thing about you that I like.”

Marinette was blushing under her mask during his entire monologue, and he feared that maybe he laid it on a little too thick despite the fact that everything he had just said was nothing short of the truth. But she smiled at him and bit the bottom of her lip. “That’s quite a speech.”

“I meant every word,” Adrien said honestly. “Don’t get me wrong, it was amazing to learn that you were Ladybug, but….it was amazing getting to know you as Marinette too.”

Marinette looked at him as if he said something that she wasn’t used to hearing, which made Adrien a little sad and a little glad that he’d plucked up the courage to say something. Her cheeks were warming, but it didn’t look to be out of embarrassment, because she was smiling softly and gradually, her eyes shining in a type of sincerity he wasn’t used to seeing from the girl behind the mask. He looked like he’d truly touched her, like he’d finally rendered Ladybug speechless, and that to him was as surprising as it was to her. 

Her transformation suddenly fell away in a flash of pink, and Ladybug turned into Marinette right before his eyes. Then, she did something strange — she moved and wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him into a hug. She was half on top of him and her face was buried in the crook of his neck, and Adrien immediately let his hands fly up, shocked and unsure what to do with them. She was shaking like she was laughing and crying at the same time, he couldn’t tell, but his heart warmed when she hugged him tighter and muttered in one of his ears. “I’m glad it’s you too. Really, really glad.”

Adrien let his arms slowly wind around her waist and returned her hug. He let his transformation fall as well, letting Plagg zip off out of sight, understanding that the two of them needed their moment together. And, wow, was Adrien enjoying it. This was two of the girls he’d found himself admiring the most all wrapped up into a lovely package that he got to hold, got to enjoy, got to joke around with, got to sit in front of in class, and got to fight alongside with. If that wasn’t the most miraculous thing that could’ve happened to him out of all of this confusion and uncertainty, he didn’t know what was. He tightened one of his arms, put a hand on the back of her head, and turned his face so that his nose was pressed into her hair. It was intimate, it was right, and it calmed Adrien down far more than he ever could have thought. It was like all of the turmoil that was his life at home and his suffocating schedule suddenly melted away into nothing because now he had Marinette. 

They stayed there for a few minutes, just holding each other, letting the warm early summer breeze keep them cool while the sounds of the city slipped on without them like a pleasant soundtrack of white noise that almost lulled the two of them to sleep. Adrien was dozing when Marinette shifted on top of him, pillowed her arms on his chest, and stared at his face. She chuckled at him and started brushing aside pieces of his hair that were getting blown in his face. “You know,” she started. “A few weeks ago, this would’ve made no sense. You know, you being Chat Noir and Chat Noir being you. But, now? I agree. I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed before.” She smiled at him and lightly flicked him on the nose. “Who would’ve thought you were both dorks.”

“I’m taking that as a compliment since I know you say I need to love myself more,” he joked. She slapped his shoulder lightly, and he laughed easily in return. Adrien sobered up a little, stared in between the two of them and cleared his throat. “Hey….you’re, uh….you’re okay with this, right? I mean, I just ask because. Well, I know how you felt about our identities. And I know that we both sort of just figured it out and there was nothing we could do about that, but still. The last thing I want to do is betray your trust.”

Marinette sighed and stared at his chin, not responding right away. “The reason I was nervous about our identities,” she started to say, sounding controlled and intentional with her words. “It was for a lot of reasons. You liked Ladybug and I was afraid you wouldn’t like Marinette. I was afraid it would put us in danger. I was afraid it would affect our partnership. I was afraid it’d distract us and keep us from doing our job properly. This was scary for a lot of reasons, and to be completely honest I sort of dreaded the day this would happen.”

Adrien’s disappointment only lasted a couple of seconds before Marinette spoke again. “But you like me. Not just my alter-ego, but me. And….well, I’d like to think we’re friends. Or at the very least very close to becoming friends. And I think….no, I know that I can grow to trust Adrien just like I grew to trust Chat Noir. It wouldn’t be hard, I don’t think. I think we’ll be okay. And once I realize all that, it’s not scary anymore. If anything it’s a relief. I can’t tell the future, but I think this will be good for us. I’ve got a feeling.”

It was Adrien’s turn to let his cheeks warm out of fondness, and suddenly he was overcome with love and happiness that came from being able to hold this girl in his arms like this and have her say such beautiful things about him. “A lucky feeling, My Lady?”

She nodded. “A very lucky one. And my feelings are almost always right.”

That they were, he thought to himself. Adrien let out a huge breath of relief and stared at her expectantly. “So what now?

Marinette clicked her tongue against her cheek in thought. “Well….we never finished studying for that history exam.”

“Boo!” Adrien hissed in distaste. “Pick something else.”

Marinette chuckled. “We have to start someday.”

“But not today,” Adrien said without budging. “This was an emotionally trying day. You can’t add emotional devastation like studying for a test to a day like that. You have to sweeten the pot a little bit.”

Marinette relented and tried to think of something else. “We can try playing handball over the roofs again. Except this time, we can’t lose the ball in the river. I can’t swim, and you’re terrified of water.”

“Terrified is a strong word.”

“You practically hiss at fire hydrants, don’t pretend you don’t.”

Adrien rolled his eyes. “Ugh, fine fine. Agree to disagree. But I like the idea. We haven’t done that in over a month.”

Marinette smirked deviously. “Loser has to outline the first three history chapters?”

“Oh, you’re on!” Adrien agreed, holding out his hand and waiting for Marinette to shake it in a promise. “Hope you’ve been paying attention in class.”

Marinette snorted and got up on her feet. “Oh please, kitty cat. There’s no way you’re beating me. Wanna remember who it was who won last time?”

“Don’t underestimate me, My Lady. That’s your biggest flaw,” he reminded her. 

“Feel free to prove me wrong.”

“It would be my absolute pleasure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that, we've come to an end. I really want to thank you all for the warm reception of this story. I didn't expect it to get so much attention on here or on Tumblr and I really appreciate the support. It's been a pleasure to read all of your tags and comments :) Hope you enjoyed this sweet little ride. 
> 
> Read/like/reblog the chapter on Tumblr [here](http://breeeliss.tumblr.com/post/146591013129/marinette-week-2016-little-bits-of-mari)  
> Follow me at breeeliss.tumblr.com


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